Statement: NCBBPN stands against HB40 and demands police accountability

​On January 17, 2023, Darryl Tyree Williams was tased to death by the Raleigh Police Department only seven days after the fatal beating of Tyree Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, at the hands of five police officers. Only 33 days into the year, we have already seen 79 deaths at the hands of police. Over the past 12 months, there’s been a total of 1,183 deaths. And these are only the ones that have been tracked and recorded. 

We stand alongside the families of these young men and the families of countless others that we cannot even name to end over-policing in our state and nation. We support the communities we serve in their call for the reallocation of police funds to support effective community programming and services that have proven to decrease the need for police response. Our communities deserve justice and to be safe rather than killed by those charged to “serve and protect.”

Now, in these first days of Black History Month, our state legislators have introduced House Bill 40 (Prevent Rioting and Civil Disorder), a second-round attempt at an already vetoed bill, HB 805, as a direct response to the recent state-sanctioned violence we’ve seen both locally and nationally. Legislators in NC want to continue to protect lawless law enforcement while creating unwarranted levels of punishment to chill the people’s right to protest. HB 40 criminalizes protest, deters people from exercising free speech, and discredits First Amendment rights by misrepresenting protests as violent or dangerous acts, but we will not be deterred! We will continue to advocate for justice by using our voices and exercising our right to protest because no one, whether Black, Brown, or white, should have to fear the government imposing harsh penalties for exercising their First Amendment rights. 

Too many families have been destroyed due to the absence of accountability and true legislative protections – not legislation that furthers a divisive and racially biased narrative against Black, Indigenous, and People of Color ( BIPOC) protesters.