Defund / Fund the Police
Racial equality is important and we should all stand tall with the black community. I also believe in supporting and respecting Law Enforcement. Both of these things need to be true. The ‘defund the police’ movement has hit our county and we all need to take action to help prevent our local law enforcement agencies from getting hit with the media’s latest rhetoric and this socialist movement trying to create a lawless society in Santa Cruz County.
Our local agencies have a hard enough time keeping good officers (mostly due to the attraction of much higher salaries over the hill), and they are good people who want to help our communities; they definitely do not deserve this attack.
Did you know that not one officer in the City of Santa Cruz Police Department has had one day off since the middle of March? Read that again. That is over 100 days in a row, and now they are being hit with this ridiculous notion of defunding them. I don’t get it. It absolutely makes me sick. It is unacceptable and unfathomable.
We can’t sit back and watch and wait for something else to happen any longer. Every single one of us must act and here is how, send e-mail and letters …. to our local City Council members and County Board of Supervisors.
The progressive Left is very active in this movement and our local agencies are getting emails from around the country to defund OUR law enforcement. Keeping them funded and even increasing their budget if people deem necessary extra trainings would be even better instead of taking away, they need MORE support, MORE community involvement and we must help them. Here is another idea – one of the biggest issues our police deal with is homelessness.
Our County has a Health and Human Service budget of over $250 million that is supposed to help address this issue. NOT ONE PERSON is employed to assist the police department with that money leaving our police officers to handle all homeless issues that could potentially be solved by a social worker. We all need to request that our County Board of Supervisors revise THEIR budget to help assist the officers so that they can put their energy and efforts elsewhere, and actual trained social workers can do the job of assisting homeless issues instead of sending a 25-year-old police officer to the scene.
I am a firm believer that good things always come out of bad. Maybe this is one of those circumstances – a little help to our overworked police and lessen their burden, as well as get some of our homeless people actual help.
Please act now. Our silence will not fix a thing. Your letters need not say much more than we support our law enforcement, please keep them funded and help them get the training they may need.
Thank you very much.
In unity, Kristen Collishaw
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Informative and Educational links regarding Funding / Defunding the police are listed below.
Please review and formulate your own opinion. (1/30/2022)
Democrats comment on why they support Defunding the Police, youtube link (Oct 2021)
https://youtu.be/dpoKJDaTbNs
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Oakland Mayor reverses defund police decision due to crime wave (Nov 2021)
https://apnews.com/article/business-crime-police-violence-homicide-cce4672e4de0c205a703614ee101336d
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Chicago Mayor reverses defund police decision due to crime wave (Oct 2021)
https://nationalpolicesupportfund.com/mayor-lightfoot-proposes-more-police-funding-as-crime-continues-to-spiral/
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Defund the Police runs into reality, Washington Post (Dec 2021)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/16/defund-police-runs-into-reality/
say, an amazing legacy.