We can no longer afford to weed the garden; we have to slash and burn
We can hate the police, but if we absolve ourselves of the responsibility to hate the system that we allow to facilitate and profit from their actions, we are in fact worse.
The officers who stand idly by when their colleagues commit atrocities are in many ways even worse than the actual perpetrators. This is because not every immoral behavior is captured on film. Demonstrating that level of complacency in public speaks volumes to the corruption that occurs in private.
But you must hate the system even more. We need to evaluate the funding of the entire judicial system and consider destroying that before burning down a liquor store or a police station. Ultimately, just as the only way to harm a corporation is financially, so too we must consider the for-profit judiciary. The people who profit off our suffering include lawyers, judges, politicians and the wealthy. The police are merely an extension of their interests. Follow the money; it’s not just civil forfeiture, or the money to be made through probationary sentences that economically cripple our most vulnerable.
On the street, the mistreatment is directed disproportionately at minorities. In court, the injustice is compounded by economics. A poor white person might stave off death via cop on the street but can get screwed in court. The poor, who are often but not always minorities, are often railroaded into plea agreements, the failings of family court and misguided or mandatory sentences that are the offspring of trumped-up charges.
All of this happens without racism, all of this continues without chokeholds or noknock warrants. They want you to have an underpaid and overworked attorney when you can’t afford one that greases the wheels in their little club of profiteers. They want you in jail pumping money into corporate pockets directly and indirectly taking your tax dollars and redistributing them to the same racists that threw you into this cesspool in the first place. They want you out mask-less so they can return to business as usual.
Disbanding the police would result in radicalized guerrilla warfare against any revolution. We cannot afford to unleash a militarized racist militia into unemployment with all the time and tools necessary to systematically destroy the other side.
If the state wishes to continue, it needs to use its attorneys to interview every cop anonymously with the public acknowledgment that there will be a one-third reduction in force in 60 days. They can spill the beans if they want the “bad apples” out, but regardless, only two out of every three of them are staying. This purge will happen through the ranks and all police need to be removed from all schools followed by an influx in funding to the education system.
How many cops does it take to perform a DUI traffic stop? Not three. After this, we evaluate the funding and the cuts needed to fund increases in the budget for the department of social services and nonprofit drug outreach to be allocated by the health department.
Next we make every complaint against the police go public, and include a photo of the officer with the complaint.
Require officers to police only in counties where they live. Use this as a factor in officer reduction. We can no longer afford to weed the garden; we have to slash and burn. The next round of budget cuts targeting an overall 50% reduction in policing needs to go toward funding the public defenders’ office.
Charles Ray Reid IV, Callaway