The San Antonio Justice Charter, which would enshrine several criminal justice reforms into the city charter if passed, is nearing its 20,000 signature requirement to make it on the May ballot as the Jan. 10 deadline looms.
The charter initiative would decriminalize abortion and low-level marijuana possession, ban no-knock warrants and chokeholds by San Antonio Police Department, expand cite-and-release for nonviolent misdemeanors, and establish a city Justice Director to oversee city criminal justice policy.
The San Antonio Police Officers’ Association (SAPOA), the local police union, has come out against the city charter initiative because they say it would hinder effective policies. Tomas has said the Justice Charter isn’t anti-police in any way and does not affect police spending or bargaining power.
Organizers said that even though some of these policies are already in place, such as the chokehold ban, this charter initiative would mean future police or city council leadership couldn’t get rid of the policies on a whim.
Ananda Tomas, the executive director of ACT4SA, which is leading the charter initiative, said she is fully confident they will have the signatures they need by the end of the weekend.
“In total we are about to hit 34,000 … and verified there are almost 20,000,” she said.
Tomas said her organization is still verifying signatures they already have, and it is still aiming to get to 35,000 in total signatures before the Jan. 10 deadline.
Josh Peck
/
Texas Public Radio
Ananda Tomas, founder and executive director of ACT 4 SA, announces the new San Antonio Justice Charter.
ACT4SA has a goal of reaching 35,000 petition signatures because of potential incorrectly filed petitions or non-Bexar County voters accidentally signing the petition. The 15,000 buffer would ensure that they would pass the bar even if some petitions could not be verified.
She said for anyone who still wants to sign the petition, they will need to pick it up from office 204 at the Woodlawn Point Community Center at 702 Donaldson Avenue and return it to the office or the drop box outside.
Tomas, who also helped lead the 2021 Prop B initiative to strip the police union of its bargaining power that narrowly failed in the municipal election, said the process for this ballot initiative has been very different.
“When I went into this, I thought that it was going to actually be easier because we were going to actually have events and people out,” she said. “We weren’t in a lockdown in a pandemic, but it turned out to be more difficult because of that.”
For one thing, she said it was much easier to get signatures in late 2020 to get Prop B on the following year’s municipal ballot because of the energy around the 2020 election and the 2021 mayoral race.
Tomas also said now that organizers have been getting signatures at events, they’re running into a lot more people who are not Bexar County voters. When they door-knocked for Prop B, they could decide to only go to neighborhoods inside Bexar County.