It’s Time to Defund the Police

Let’s not play word salad. Let’s not act intellectually obtuse. Above all, let’s not play partisan politics when people’s literal lives are on the line. It’s time to defund the damn police! Defund does not mean abolish, which means get rid of; or disband, which means to break apart. Since May 19, 2020, which was exactly one month ago today, I’ve watched on video, Ahmaud Arbery’s last seconds of life as three racist vigilantes chased him like a hunted animal, and then shot him, for jogging while Black. To add insult to injury, one of his murderers called him a nigger after he shot him; the murderer’s sister took pics of his dead body to post on her Snapchat, and his other murderer hit him with his truck. Because of this third murderer’s police connections, it took 85 days for anyone to be arrested.

Less than a week later, I watched as Officer Derek Chauvin, choked George Floyd for 8 minutes, 46 seconds, with his knee pressed against his neck, over 2 minutes after George lost consciousness.

Before I could even collected my thoughts over George Floyd’s death, before rigor mortis even developed, I learned of Breonna Taylor, a Kentucky EMT, and nursing student, who was murdered in a no knock warrant, where three officers shot into her home over 20 times, eight shots actually hitting her. To add insult to injury, they arrested her boyfriend and jailed him over two months on assault and…