Politics Race

A Push to Disarm Auxiliary Police

By Maya Mitchell

Spectrum staff

Pushed by local teen and young adult activists who want to disarm the Maplewood Police Department Police Auxiliary, made up of volunteers, the Maplewood Town Council voted in late July to suspend the force for 90 days. By a 3-to-2 vote, the town’s Public Safety Committee, which includes the chief of police, deputy mayor and mayor, will review how the auxiliary force operates.

The Maplewood and South Orange Youth Coalition is among organizations advocating disarming the volunteer force. They are doing so amid calls nationwide to decrease funding of police departments and, in general, change how they operate. By comparison, the New York Police Department’s volunteer auxiliary officers do not have guns.

“A lot of people in town who are pushing for nationwide change and defunding the police saw this as a good first step to eventually defunding or even disbanding the police,” said Olivia Brash, a senior at Columbia High School, which is in the South Orange-Maplewood School District. She is a member of the youth coalition, whose Instagram posts had drawn more than 1,400 likes regarding this issue.

Deputy Mayor Dean Dafis voted for the suspension. “We have marched with our youth who have courageously talked about their hurt… The hurt that some members of a community have experienced is by their own police. That can’t be discounted, that’s real,” he said, during the council meeting.

Thirty-two of the 45 persons who spoke at the meeting supporting disarming the auxiliary force. Thirteen, including 11 full-time or volunteer police officers, people spoke against the idea.

“I’ve lived in Maplewood for 20 years and served as a patrolman with the police auxiliary for 15 of those years,” said Auxiliary Officer Shaun Chalk, during his testimony, arguing that to keep the police auxiliary. “Police are a target … The firearm issued to me is for my self-defense and for the defense of others.”

According to the Force Report, a black person in Maplewood is 368 percent more likely than a white person to be subjected to “compliance hold, takedown and hands/fist” force by Maplewood police force. Of the 25,380 residents of Maplewood, which is 3.88 square miles in size, 38.2 percent were black in July 2019.

Proposing to disarm auxiliary police officers is just one way that the 130-member youth coalition hopes to, according to its Instagram account, “ensure #blacklivesmatter” in Maplewood. Also, they are working with school officials to create a bill of rights for Maplewood students and ensure that no child goes hungry in a community often seen as well-to-do, even though many families are cash-strapped.

“One of the women on the committee was saying ‘This national attention to the movement is really good and we need to make change, but there’s nothing wrong locally or nothing’s happened yet so why are you trying to vote against [disarming the auxiliary police],’” Lily Forman, a Columbia High senior, told The Spectrum. “Those are the same committee members saying ‘We’re so diverse’ and ‘We’re so progressive’ and ‘Let’s paint Black Lives Matter on the street.’ But when you have actual community members coming to do something, it’s ‘Nothing’s happened here yet.’ ”