Know Your Rights
Cheering on armed forces to suppress Constitutional rights - is there anything more American than that?
GOP Defunds Law Enforcement?
Since the FBI served a warrant to retrieve classified documents from Trump’s house, several GOP members have come out forcefully and vocally calling to remove funding for the FBI.
Trump supporters held an armed rally outside an FBI office in Phoenix. And one Trump supporter in Cincinnati tried to storm the FBI office.
I guess they’re done backing law enforcement?
If you had predicted that GOP Trump loyalists would be calling to defund law enforcement in 2022, ride that prognostication wave and go buy a lottery ticket.
Activism
Sometimes it feels as if there are way too many important issues to deal with at once. It’s exhausting to try and keep up.
187 Minutes
187 minutes. Over three hours. Trump watched on TV as the crowd he drew to DC, riled up, directed to the Capitol, and encouraged to stop the legitimate certification of the election stormed the Capitol building, violently attacked police, and chanted violent threats at the Vice President and Congress.
His aides tried to get him to say something to stop it. He tweeted about his disappointment in Pence. Pence’s security detail, meanwhile, was contacting their loved ones in case they didn’t make it out alive.
Congress people tried to get the President to stop the crowd. But many knew he wouldn’t disavow the rioters. And he wouldn’t. He said they were special. He wouldn’t even say the election was over the next day.
It was so bad that the acting Secretary of Defense was not getting orders from the President. He was getting orders from the Vice President, who’s not even in the chain of command. But they knew they couldn’t listen to the President at that time. He was dangerous and trying to subvert our democracy for his own power.
Trump just watched. For three hours. As our democracy hung by a thread. He wouldn’t act to stop it.
Even the Uvalde police didn’t wait that long to act.
It’s unfathomable to me that people can still support Trump.
Sensing a pattern
sensing a pattern here. Yes, I can imagine it’s tough to be a police officer. Yet it seems that the more they are criticized for failures and lack of response, the more funding they wind up getting.
Even here in San Francisco (which is not as progressive as many people think) - we’ve had years now of reports where police just decline to investigate crimes. Or worse, reports in the newspaper of police turning their backs on a crime in progress (such as store break-ins) and doing nothing, even when citizens are yelling at them to act. And no, it doesn’t have to do with prosecutorial approach. Besides, that’s not their job to worry about with a crime in progress.
Yet even here, the mayor is increasing police funding. It’s like, the worse they do, the more funding they seem to get. Because crime stokes a primal fear in people and many are unwilling to see that more police, more tactical gear, more weapons, are not the answer.
Uvalde is a prime example. That city spends a huge portion of its budget on police. Didn’t help the kids.
And this isn’t even getting into the recurring issues of police brutality, racial discrimination, etc.
At some point we’ll have to face that more police and funding for ever more outrageous weapons are not the answers.
Unintended Consequences
Poorly designed laws that aren’t thought through produce chaos and unintended consequences.
In the rush to activate anti-abortion laws, several states have implemented bans starting at conception. Regardless of one’s beliefs about when life starts and what’s right, this is bound to produce chaos across multiple fronts in life. Unfortunately it’s likely to result in very invasive and intrusive questions and testing for many women.
Who knows, cops might start carrying pregnancy tests along with breathalyzer tests. Because who could imagine that resulting in any problems… 🙄
Fund the Moms, Instead
As the horror unfolded in Uvalde, a mother was handcuffed outside the school for “interfering,” as she pleaded with law enforcement officers to enter the building and save the children. Her children.
As a parent I can imagine the frustration, fear, and anger as the seconds and minutes ticked by, knowing a gunman was in that school with her kids.
So she did what the law enforcement officers hadn’t done. She went in and saved her kids. Alone. Unarmed. Brought her children to safety.
We’ve seen the Uvalde SWAT team photo. Dressed up, playing soldier. We know the armored tanks that many of these police forces have. It’s been reported that Uvalde spends ~40% of its municipal budget on its police force. And those police stood by for 90 minutes as children and teachers were slaughtered. What a waste of money. And it contributed to wasted, innocent lives.
Many want us to hold up police as heroes. It’s a dangerous job, undoubtedly. But they do too many jobs for which they aren’t suited. And this one, for which they’ve been outfitted, trained, and paid, they didn’t do. It’s not a problem unique to Uvalde.
Remember that when politicians tell us they need more money for police. Instead, we need better solutions than police.
Because in this one instance, a single mother did more than most of the police there.
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