We are a community coalition fighting to stop the city from expanding the prison industrial complex in Colorado Springs.

On August 22nd, Colorado Springs City Council voted to spend $400,000 of city dollars to run a ballot initiative to retain almost $5 million in TABOR funds to put towards an estimated $40 million police training facility. Mayor Mobolade is using a privately funded community poll to claim that there is broad community support for this project, although he told some of our organizers privately that the poll found 60% were in support of spending the money on supportive housing instead. He has not shared the poll results publicly. 

Meanwhile, the Colorado ACLU has filed a lawsuit against CSPD and the FBI on behalf of local community organizers, including lead plaintiff Jacqueline “Jax” Armendariz-Unzueta, Communications Coordinator for Colorado Springs DSA; and the Chinook Center, the progressive community organizing center that is our home base. The lawsuit seeks accountability for the unconstitutional surveillance and targeting of leftist organizers exercising our 1st amendment rights to peaceful protest. This comes on the heels of the city’s 13th lawsuit since 2020 for CSPD excessive use of force and abuses of power.

CSPD should not be rewarded for their history of violence and violation of our community’s constitutional rights. Colorado Springs DSA is fully committed to fighting the expansion of the prison industrial complex in Colorado Springs and will push forward with an abolitionist vision to fight the proposed police training facility and Mayor Mobolade’s intention to expand the El Paso County jail. We are proud to work in coalition with other community organizations as the #StopCopCityCOS campaign.

We urge all community members to vote NO on the November 7th ballot measure to fund a new police training facility, and to join us in continuing to fight any other tactics the city deploys to push this project forward. We demand public safety policy built on providing for people’s basic needs and the prevention of criminalization through healing and inclusion. We keep us safe. We demand investment in community and the guarantee of healthy, safe, and dignified lives for ALL.

Get Involved

Ready to join the resistance? Here are some actions you can take to help.

  • Sign up for our email list to get campaign updates and calls to action. Signup box is below.

  • Follow us on Facebook and Instagram and share our posts to help raise awareness and grow community engagement in the campaign. The police training facility proposal is not popular, but people need to know to get out the vote in November.

  • VOTE NO! on November 7th.

  • Call and email Mayor Mobolade and city council and tell them that you oppose the building of a police training facility. Here is the link to find your city council representative and their contact info.

  • Make a donation to the campaign to help us reach more people [link forthcoming]. The city is spending $400,000 to pass the TABOR ballot measure to fund the training facility — we need all the help we can get to grow our grassroots movement to shut it down.

  • Register your people to vote! Talk to them about the police training facility and why you oppose it. Raise awareness about CSPD’s unconstitutional and brutal actions. Discuss the possible ways we can spend the $40 million that the facility would cost instead — such as ending homelessness and housing insecurity with housing first for all, jobs with living wages, access to mental health services, better education, and more! Remember: police do not prevent or deter crime — they only react to it after it has already happened. With the right community investments, we can prevent criminalization of our community members by providing for everyone’s basic needs and building connections between us.

  • Watch and share Jax’s interview on Democracy Now! that details the full story of how CSPD partnered with the FBI to infiltrate, surveil, and attempt to entrap leftist organizations and their members as they fought for racial justice and affordable housing for all.

  • Read and share our Abolition Zine, which documents more of CSPD’s atrocities, including their failure to prevent the massacre at Club Q.

  • Check out our abolition resource page to deepen your knowledge about the harms of policing and incarceration, and the life-affirming interventions and institutions we could create in community to build a safer world from the grassroots up!