About

The Peaceful Streets Project is an all-volunteer, grassroots effort uniting people to end the institutional violence taking place on our streets and in our society. Through community organizing and direct action tactics, the Peaceful Streets Project seeks to support communities in understanding, exercising, and standing up for their rights, as well as creating viable alternatives to the violent institutions of social control.

Vision:
A society free of state-sponsored institutionalized violence.

Mission: Through community organizing, engaging in non-political and non-violent direct action tactics, and utilizing new technologies, the Peaceful Streets Project seeks to bring about a cultural shift where individuals understand their rights and hold law enforcement officials accountable, and communities protect and serve each other.

To fulfill our mission, the Peaceful Streets Project is undertaking the following actions:

  1. Ongoing, free training sessions on knowing your rights in police encounters and on recording police activity safely and responsibly. Please contact us if you are interested in hosting a training for your community.
  2. Ongoing “Police Complaint Department” events in public spaces to enable people to go on record with their stories of police abuse. Click here for samples of testimonies collected so far.
  3. Ongoing “cop watch” actions (peacefully video-witnessing police activity to assist those who may be victims of police misconduct). Peaceful Streets volunteers bearing witness in cop watch actions should adhere to the PSP Cop Watch Code of Conduct.
  4. Annual Police Accountability Summit, featuring a free, full day of workshops, speakers, and live testimonies of experiences of police abuse. PSP has hosted two summits.
  5. Supporting similar efforts across the country.

History

The Peaceful Streets Project has its roots in a story of police abuse and corruption. On New Year’s Day 2012, Antonio Buehler was a designated driver who pulled into a 7-11 in downtown Austin to fuel up his truck. At the gas station he pulled into, there was a DUI stop in progress. As Buehler and his passenger were about to leave, they heard a violent scream. They turned and saw one of the cops (Robert Snider) ripping the female passenger out of the car and throwing her to the ground. The other cop (Patrick Oborski) then ran over and joined in. As they twisted the victim’s arms behind her in what is a torture move, she cried out more. Buehler pulled out his blackberry and attempted to take pictures. When the victim saw Buehler, she begged him to please record the incident. Buehler then began yelling at the cops, telling them that she had done nothing wrong and demanded that they stop assaulting her.

After they picked her up, cuffed her and walked her toward the rear squad car, Oborski turned and approached Buehler. Oborski got in Buehler’s face and demanded to know who Buehler thought he was. Buehler said it didn’t matter who he was and that he had a right to take pictures. Oborski kept moving in on Buehler, Buehler took a couple steps back, and as Oborski raised his voice, Buehler raised his. Then Oborski shoved Buehler by hitting him in the chest area. Buehler shouted at him, telling Oborski to stop touching him. Oborski pushed Buehler back until he was trapped between Oborski and the bed of the truck. Oborski continued to push on Buehler, as Buehler leaned back over the bed of the truck, and then Oborski told Buehler that he was under arrest, put him in a choke hold, took him to the ground and cuffed him. Later, Oborski would told Buehler that ‘you don’t f*** with the police, you f***** with the wrong cop, and now you’re going to learn your f****** lesson!”

That lesson was being charged with a felony crime of spitting in a cop’s face which carries 2-10 years in prison. Buehler and his passenger began a campaign to get witnesses to step forward, and thankfully several did; each one willing to testify that the cops assaulted Buehler, and that Buehler did not spit in Oborski’s face. One witness then told took cell phone video of the assault, and published it on YouTube. The media ran with the story.

In Austin several people stepped forward. Pam Farley set up a legal defense fund, Harold Gray and others organized a couple of protests, and people from around the country started calling into local radio shows to demand accountability. Despite overwhelming evidence that the cops were the ones that committed the crimes that night, they did not back down. After the passenger (who was falsely arrested on a public intoxication charge) told the media her story, Austin Police came back a week later and charged her with two additional bogus crimes – resisting arrest and failure to obey a lawful order. The legal defense fund was able to cover the victims’ court fees, but each still has charges pending against them.

In the month that followed the New Year’s Day incident, numerous people approached Buehler to tell him their own stories of police abuse (to include being framed, violently assaulted and even raped), and none for personal gain, but just to encourage him to continue his fight. Buehler said that because of his West Point and Stanford background, his military service, his non-profit work, no criminal history, the circumstances of his arrest, the witnesses and video, and because he was not Black or Hispanic, he was building a strong base of supporters that spanned socio-economic, political and racial boundaries. He teamed with some local activists, namely John Bush, Harold Gray and Kaja Tretjak, to use his new platform to launch the Peaceful Streets Project to fight back against police abuse. The original vision for the Peaceful Streets Project was to be a non-violent, non-partisan, direct action grassroots effort to change culture so that people know their rights, stand up for their rights and the rights of others in order to curb police violence.

They organized the 1st Annual Peaceful Streets Project Police Accountability Summit, which was a big success. At the event they handed out 100 cameras to people in need so they could record interactions with the police. The Peaceful Streets Project then built on that success; they were named the Grassroots Activist Movement of the year in Central Texas, and they launched 14 new chapters from Honolulu to Sandusky (OH) to Manchester (NH) — although we later decided to back off the franchise model because of an inability to ensure that certain chapters were adhering to our values. The following year the Peaceful Streets Project hosted the 2nd Annual Police Accountability Summit. The keynote speakers were Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, and Radley Balko who wrote a new book, Rise of the Warrior Cop. This event was a celebration of the success Peaceful Streets Project had had over their first full year.

The Peaceful Streets Project put a spotlight on criminal cop behavior, and for that they were (and still are) targeted and wrongfully arrested a many more times, and they have even received death threats from cops and their supporters. Through their diverse and sustained tactics, the Peaceful Streets Project has seen marked positive changes in the behavior of cops towards the people they interact with (although not necessarily with us). As importantly, in the aftermath of the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, and thousands of others who have lost their lives to cops in the past few years, the Peaceful Streets Project has played a positive role in a growing movement for police accountability, reform, and most importantly, abolition.

We are currently looking for volunteers as well as donors and sponsors to help us build and expand!

Get involved!

  • E-mail peacefulstreets@gmail.com or call us at (512) 981-7675 to volunteer or request a training for your community!
  • Like us on Facebook!
  • Donate through Rally.org to support our work!
    You can also donate via snail mail:
    Peaceful Streets Project
    512 W. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd
    P.O. Box 244
    Austin, TX 78701

Many thanks for taking the time to learn about our work.