Let's look at the numbers: In total, $100 billion a years is spent on policing and $80 billion is spent on incarceration. This, according to Forbes , despite a drop in crime in the last 30 years!
In 2017, Oakland spent 41% of it's budget on policing: $242.5 million. Chicago spent 39.6 % of its budget on policing: $1.46 billion. Minnesota spent 35.8 % of its budget on policing: $163.2 billion. New York spent 8.2 % of its budget on policing: $4.89 billion.
What does this money buy?
Lots of AR-15 Carbines, the same weaponry our fellow citizens bring with them to protest against the lockdown a few weeks back.
-
M16 assault rifles
-
Heckler and Koch MP5 (submachine guns)
In 2019, 1,004 Americans were shot and killed by these weapons that came into play in the 1950s and 1960s (no surprise there!), when black Americans were fighting for their human rights in the US and the human rights of Asians in Vietnam.
And it's not just black American men. The Los Angeles Times reports that Latinx men and boys, black women and girls and Indigenous men, women, and children are also murdered by the police at "higher rates than their white peers."
And police help fill the cells!
That's what comes of increase funding to the police. That's what comes from hiring people who haven't a clue about who they aretheir history in violence as conquerors and enslavers.
Brutality and cruelty comes from a lack of understanding America's history of violence.
De fund the policeon the way to no such entity!
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
