Our History
2016
DBP emerges as a campaign to stop the building of a $71 million dollar new police headquarters in Durham. The city moved through with the plans, though our advocacy helps win Participatory Budgeting pilot, a direct democracy experiment with one of the highest participation rates in the U.S.
2019
We stop the hiring of 72 new Durham Police officers and win living wages for all city workers + $500K for the eviction diversion program. We also win the approval to create a Community-Led Safety and Wellness Taskforce.
2020
We receive a $1 million dollar pledge from the City of Durham to support alternatives to policing. Started a rapid response campaign to challenge DPD’s request for $600K towards a taser replacement contract as a tactic towards long term goal of disarming police and we launch a campaign to keep surveillance technology out of our city.
2021
AJ Williams, a long time volunteer with Durham Beyond Policing runs for Durham City Council, Ward 3, with broad community support, and loses the race by around 600 votes. This moment proves that our city is ready for a strong abolitionist candidate platform, and we begin to think more about how to engage our neighbors in the fight.
2022
The installation of ShotSpotter is proposed again and we ultimately lose this round of the fight to stop the trial installation of ShotSpotter, due to the swearing in of a new pro-policing City Council Majority. We win the creation of a Community Safety Department and begin gathering resident input on unarmed community crisis response.
2022
We helped roll out the crisis care pilot in June. With the HEART Crisis Response team in motion, Durham residents can access skilled, non-violent, compassionate care while surviving crisis. Simultaneously, we lose the fight to stop the $30m expansion of the Durham County Youth Jail with our counter-proposal for a youth wellness center. We make 4 new hires to our staff!
2023
During the pilot phase HEART workers have delivered aid, community resources, and much more to community members, in over 6200 responses, taking an average of 5.47 minutes to arrive at the scene. We led the #HaveAHEART campaign to have the program be expanded citywide, 24 hours for 7 days a week – organizing the support of over 40 community organizations, small businesses, houses of faith and over 1900 Durham neighbors. We led 5 #FreeOurFam popular education workshops focused on bringing the framework of popular education, abolition and healing justice to our communities. We have started to roll out our Community Design work – training over 40 Black and Brown local leaders to engage in participatory action research focused on creating resources that tend to violence in our communities.