Nothing Has Changed Since George Floyd Died, US Cops Still Kill Someone Every 8 Hours [if you Delegate your "Public Servant" the Power to Forcibly Control You, is He Still Your Servant?]
/From [FTP] It has been nearly two years since Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. At the time, Floyd’s death would set off massive protests across the country as politicians and political pundits played lip service to Black Lives Matter and others, as they offered up their hollow support. Illustrating the extremely hollow nature of their “support” is the fact that despite all the appeals to emotion, the toothless “reform” bills, and incessant gaslighting — absolutely nothing has changed.
As the fourth month of 2022 begins, American cops are keeping to their deadly numbers like clockwork. One quarter of the year is over and cops have killed more than 250 people — right on track with previous years. This number is set to increase by one, on average, every 8 hours, every single day, of every single week, of every single month, of every single year.
The Biden administration promised change but since he’s been in office, it’s been more of the same, and, in fact, has gotten worse. Last year’s budget (FY 2021) for the hiring program, approved under Trump, was set at $156.5 million. Biden more than doubled the funding for it in FY 2022.
The “defund the police” movement has since morphed into a “fund the police” more movement, spearheaded by the very people who promised to do the opposite. Biden just released a “fund the police” budget proposal in March for $30bn more in law enforcement and crime prevention efforts, including funding to put “more police officers on the beat.”
America spends more on policing than every other country in the world spends on their entire militaries, except for China. But if we remove China from the picture, US law enforcement would be the largest military in the world — and it’s deployed right here in the land of the free.
Despite all this spending, crime in many areas is on the rise, corruption in police is rampant, and police in America are still killing unarmed and even innocent people. And what do the politicians do to fix it? Increase spending.
Since 2018, cops in America have killed 4,761 citizens. And politicians want to give them more money, as if that is the solution.
“To invest more into a system that we all know is broken is really a slap in the face to everyone who marched in summer 2020,” said Chris Harris, director of policy at the Austin Justice Coalition in Texas. “It reflects just a real lack of solutions to the problems that we face. It’s just more of the same – even if it’s exactly the thing that we know continues to hurt and kill people.”
These shocking numbers highlight a major problem when it comes to how police are policing. For starters, police have proven their incompetence in dealing with mental health issues. Since 2015 alone, police in America have over a thousand people during a mental health crisis. Many of these folks were never accused of a crime prior to police arriving on the scene.
This inability to resolve mental health issues without using deadly force is the impetus behind programs like the Support Team Assistance Response (STAR) program in Denver. You know, actual solutions that don’t require billions more in tax money.
As TFTP has pointed out, even cops who voluntarily attend Crisis Intervention Training (CIT), have shown that they are quick to the trigger when dealing with the mentally ill.
The list of unarmed and often completely innocent mentally ill people killed by police is immense. TFTP archives are full of tragic stories in which police were called to help someone in a crisis and end up murdering them. People are killed even when they aren’t in a crisis and simply act differently like Elijah McClain, who was on his way home from buying groceries and was murdered by police because he was an introvert and wore a ski mask. [MORE]