What Defund The Police Means To Me

I haven’t seen my 14-year-old son in nearly 5 days.

The last time we talked he was angry over the pimp at his mother’s funeral and what that inferred his mom did for drugs while abandoning him.

He’s mad that of the few relatives he knows most are addicted and struggling with mental health issues.

He’s living in a spiral of teenage angst and self-harm.

His mom’s dead and I’m the only support he has — I have no one to call to help me help him.

To me defunding of the police is the most important step our society can take. Unless we want to birth more children into lives of suffering while we strangle our fathers and murder young mothers.

Defunding the police doesn’t mean no police or more crime — it means more peace.

This can be done in two ways I’d like to explain:

1) Defund current police expenditures of militaristic modalities so we can fund it a position of prestige not just power. Because mandating regular training in fields like jujitsu, psychology, addiction treatment and mental health arms them to succeed in the tasks we ask of them. This means raising the bar of entry, compensation and prestige.

2) Or we can defund the police so we can fund community works programs, youth/community coaches. Police would be downsized to being essentially tactical swat teams prepared to meet violence with violence. They’d be specialist in making the precarious decision of ending a life to save the whole.

1 We can defund the guns to give cops tools to build peace

If we defund the ballooning cost that police departments spend on riot shields, assault riffles, cars with software to get more speeding tickets, tear gas launchers and the host of bureaucratic expenses that come with imprisoning non-violent offenders — then we can arm them with the weapons they need to do the job we ask of them.

I picked my son up from the cops last week. A group of about 20 teens were drinking by the beach. They aren’t “bad influences” they are hurting, just like my son.

The officers were armed with shiny SUVs that had guns hung in the back. They had a utility belts of cuffs, guns, tasers, pepper spray ready to serve and protect.

But all of it was useless, and they looked exhausted.

They said they were doing me a favor by not giving my son a piece of paper to put him into the criminal system. I am grateful that they didn’t, but when I got home my son simply left the car to go hang out with his friends again.

I’m not enabling him with money and gifts, but I also don’t want to gift abuse.

The only options the cops were equipped to perform was to shoot, arrest or scare. Being that my son has seen the swollen corpse of his mother in a coffin, he is unfazed by any of this.

I really wish I had someone to call, but I know the cops are overtaxed and ill-equipped for the puzzles my son needs help solving, and for the puzzles our nation needs help solving: healing.

Other organizations are either poorly funded or nonexistent.

A man walking with a gun may make you feel safe, but it can’t protect your family from the suffering this game of life presents us with. You can’t kill death.

If we equip officers with jujitsu, they won’t have to default to their guns to protect the peace.

If we equip our officers with mental health training they can have the skills to help the suffering people they are constantly presented with… and not let their hate make them murderers.

I love cops, but we ask them to build a house yet give them tanks and grenade launchers.

We either need to defund the tanks and give them nails and hammers or found another organization equipped to build peace.

2 We can defund the cops so we can fund new peace building organizations

In this model police keep their low bar for entry and pay, we just defund the militaristic element of policing so we can fund a new peace building organization.

Imagine a cop packing heat (handguns and rifles) driving a Prius or Tesla instead of gas hog SUVs (tank?) full of tactical gear. In this more efficient vehicle, he would be teamed not with another cop, but rather a youth/community coach.

By coach I mean an individual that is trained in jujitsu, conflict de-escalation, mental health and addiction treatment. We can easily make this a low cost position by letting youth in high school or college get the certification. These skills will also serve them to be better citizens and facilitators of a peaceful communities. Because how many young people in high school don’t know what career path to take? A lot, I know — we’ve all been there.

This gives them an option that serves us all.

Then when they go on to whatever position they fill in team humanity they would make it all better

Would they be worse for knowing how to not be addicted, resolve conflicts or protect the communities they’re in?

How could it make our lives be better? You get it.

Imagine how nice it would be to have someone to call, that was just there to help regardless of monetary transactions, without fear violence or judgment.

This dream of law and love could be the new order — and it is what I mean by defund the police.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” Albert Einstein

Will America stop the insanity, or will we continue to fund a war against our mothers, fathers and children?

*****Let me know if you disagree and why, becasue if I’m holding falsehoods I’d like to burn them.