From: Jesse Langdon
Columbus
I haven’t woken up and had a good morning in quite some time.
Over the past year, we have all woken up to the atrocious U.S. COVID-19 death toll. This past year was made even more difficult by the murder of George Floyd.
I am tired of waking up nearly every day to learn about another person of color who has been murdered by a police officer somewhere in this country, and in the midst of a weeks-long trial of the Minneapolis police officer who murdered George Floyd, more sad news has come out of Minnesota.
On April 11, Daunte Wright was killed by yet another police officer — this time in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.
Protests have been sparked over this injustice, and predictably the police decided to respond with violence. At this point is anyone surprised that people start getting beat and gassed with a chemical weapon banned for use in the theatre of war once law enforcement responds to nonviolent protestors? I for one am not.
Modern police forces are a farce. No longer do we have officers to protect and serve the people, but rather to protect and serve the status quo.
Oh, there’s a protest downtown? They will be sure to be there to protect insured property, not the citizens of their locale’s first amendment rights. What happens if you question an officer or don’t follow their words like it’s the word of your god? You can be arrested on trumped-up charges and held in a cell, solely for expressing your first amendment right and speaking truth to power.
In 2020, law enforcement officers killed more than 1,100 people in this country. We’re only partway through Apri,l and so far police have killed 268 individuals.
Naturally, as anyone with a basic understanding of law and order, you might assume most of these officers were at least tried — if not charged — with some form of crime as ultimately their actions led to the death of one they are sworn to “protect.” In reality, in a year with 1,100 police-directed killings, only 16 officers were charged with a crime.
The organization Police Violence Reports was only able to identify 444 officers out of the 1,100 murders that year. Of those 444 officers, 14 had shot or otherwise killed someone and five had been responsible for multiple shootings.
If we do not defund the police, reinvest police budgets in our communities, and drastically retrain law enforcement officers, our Black and brown brothers and sisters are going to continue to be killed by police because they receive qualified immunity just for throwing a badge on in the morning.
How long are Americans going to sit idly by while each morning we wake up only to enter another period of mourning? Defund now.
