No More Police Reform Experiments, Defund the Police and Invest In Communities.

Maria Eva Dorigo
Published: 06/05/2020

This is what communities of color have been asking for a long time: to invest in their needs. Police in poor neighborhoods only cause suffering. What I personally expect from the horrible trend of assassinations that we had to witness during the lasts months, is that we get to reduce the amount of police officers who interact with the community and hire more social workers and invest in communities through social services with the money we are allocating now in military equipment or trainings that do not change the interactions of police officers with communities.

Crime will be reduced to a minimum when we become a more equal society. Communities need money for schools, to guarantee food for all, recreational activities, mental health services, health care services, affordable housing.

The police should focus on crimes such as human trafficking, hate crimes, kidnappings, money laundering, terrorism, child pornography. I do not want police to be in charge of evicting a family from their home, or helping immigration agents to arrest an undocumented person, or arrest a person for paying with a fake bill. We can implement restorative practices for antisocial behavior and petty crimes.

I understand that for many of you it is quite difficult to imagine a society without police, but we once lived without police. We do have the ingredients to try a new recipe, one that really gives us the results we need.

There is no more time and there are no more lives to spare. Let us not try another wave of police reform that will not work. Divest from punitiveness and invest in services for the community. We know how to take care of each other. Let us start a new era.

Topics: Criminal Justice ReformYouth JusticeDefund the PoliceImmigration