On Jan. 28th, Interim Police Chief Stan Reno announced that the Carbondale Police Department was moving ahead with building a police substation in the Eurma C. Hayes Community Center.

While it is true that the city of Carbondale has a problem with violent crime and shootings, we also know true violence prevention does not come from increased policing and interaction with the criminal justice system. Instead, violence is prevented by addressing the conditions that give rise to violence in the community, such as community trauma, stress, hopelessness in the face of poverty, suffering, and oppression, disconnected communities, and instability. Before we invest any more in police, we should make sure we are making an earnest investment in transforming these conditions as a city.

The Eurma C. Hayes Center was built in 1973 to serve the Northeast side of Carbondale. Over the years it has housed a daycare, literacy program, a health clinic, a dental clinic, job training programs, and a variety of other forms of direct community support. It was built to embody the promise of community empowerment to the Northeast, after a century of systematic racist neglect.

Over the years the City of Carbondale reduced funding for the Center, until finally in 2010 the City abruptly defunded the daycare, ending its last line of support. The City said that they lacked the funds to sustain it and allowed the building to fall into disrepair. The same year they claimed to not have $100K for a daycare, the City increased the Police Department budget by over $220K. There was funding, the City of Carbondale chose to redirect it from childcare to policing.

We demand that plans for a CPD satellite office in the Eurma Hayes Center stop immediately so that the City of Carbondale, Eurma C. Hayes Center board of directors, and community leaders can come together and create violence prevention programming that strengthens our city from the roots, not threatens its residents with surveillance and incarceration.

NO POLICE SUBSTATION IN EHC!
REFUND EHC!


Update 2/4: The following paragraph was removed from this letter: "While the EHC is in need of a steady rent-stream, we, the undersigned, believe that the creation of a police substation in the Eurma Hayes center is not a productive investment in the spirit of the center or the community around it." It was removed because, it turns out, the new Director of the Eurma C. Hayes Community Center, Bob Wills, had actually offered the Carbondale Police Department space in the community center free of charge. This means that the proposed substation project can be called off without depriving the ECHC of any finances.