Demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd did not slow down this weekend in South Florida. Events took place from Palm Beach through Broward and into Miami-Dade County.
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Tifanny Burks, a community organizer with the Black Lives Matter Alliance of Broward, said going forward, there will be a focus on teaching more people across the county how to run their own "Defund the Police" campaigns. The group is holding a "Defund the Police" call countywide July 6.
"We're really going to be teaching people all the skills they need to learn on how do we actually take this slogan, this chant, this momentum and push it towards enacted legislation,” Burks said.
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The group is currently calling to immediately reallocate $10 million from the Fort Lauderdale Police Department's budget to go toward mental health and community programs. Activists are also calling for the Broward Sheriff’s Office to not receive taxpayer funds for racial equity education. The County Commission is expected to discuss a plan this week to allot $500,000 for the Broward Sheriff's Office to receive that education.
“We want them to do this training, and they should do this training and they have claimed to have done this training in the past. However, we think that they could do more with less resources,” Burks said. “There’s other line items they could reconsider to actually do this training without having more taxpayer dollars funneled into the police department.”
Burks said more than 150 people plan to speak about reallocating funding for law enforcement at the Fort Lauderdale City and at the Broward County Commission meetings taking place on Tuesday.
You can find the agenda for the upcoming Fort Lauderdale City Commission meeting, here.
You can also read the Broward County Commission’s proposed resolution below:
