The Hate We Pay For
Police service is not ‘free’; it is paid for by the taxpayer, and the taxpayer is very often the poor person himself. He may very well be paying more in taxes for police now than he would in fees to private, and far more efficient, police companies.
The poor person himself — the same person who will be targeted by police, wrongfully imprisoned, racially profiled or killed. We as citizens of the United States are funding a legacy of white supremacy, hatred and violence toward black people that has existed for centuries.
Since this country was founded our nation’s police have openly enforced racist laws on slavery and segregation. Enforced, participated and contributed to. And in the last 50 years that same brand of justice has consistently enforced policies on their war on crime and “drugs” that led to a racial disparity so unbalanced that lady justice would topple over from the scale being so heavy on the side of white. A disparity in the way they use force, how they arrest people, who ends up in jail, who ends up on death row and a justice system so corrupted in its treatment of minorities and immigrants that the notion of “justice for all” should have a parenthetical claiming “as long as you’re white.”
This is the hate we pay for.
According to Local Progress, a coalition of local elected officials, funding for Minneapolis’ police and corrections department grew 41% between 2009 and 2019 — outpacing the growth of the city’s general fund in that same time period — and made up 37% of the general fund in fiscal year 2019.
A year later the world faces en economic crisis of epic proportions as the result of a pandemic. Cities are literally cutting spending because of dwindling tax revenues yet police budgets consistently account for these large chunks of the general funds of many American cities. Funds that support a system of brutality and biased law enforcement. Funds that ultimately supported police in cities all over the country that have been the center of heinous acts on the people they are being paid to protect and serve.
This is the hate we pay for.
Let’s take it one more level up. What happens when these cases of brutality and violence make it to the courts (if it gets that far)? Who pays for that? Who pays the legal fees of defending police officers who commit these atrocities on their own citizens? It comes out of the general funds or bonds, you know the ones currently dwindling because of pandemic. Which is generated from our tax dollars. Not only do we pay for the brutal force brought down upon us, we pay to help defend or settle cases for those who saw it fit to make a choice in that moment to end a life or to commit harm on a fellow human being all while under the armour of a shield that offers a promise of safety and security.
Shining a light on the city currently lit from the fires of rage, unrest, discord and protest, Minneapolis paid more than $25 million for police misconduct between 2003 and 2019. Remember Terrance Franklin? Shot and killed during an altercation with police in 2013? The city, this year, agreed to pay nearly $795,000 in a wrongful death lawsuit. Three things to point out here:
- It’s a tentative settlement — so even at that high number, the attempt at some monetary reconciliation is not assured to his family.
- The settlement was only reached — 3 months ago. In February.
- During the 7 years that have passed the police accused of this crime, carried on with their lives because in 2013 … they were found not guilty. So that $800k the city is offering up — That’s taxpayer money.
We are paying the mortgage on a crime that should have never happened where the criminals are the ones who are supposed to be helping us.
That is the hate we pay for.
What should we be paying for? What should our money be invested in? Smaller police budgets, less police “force,” less mass incarceration, better training, better community involvement. This “war on drugs” started by President Richard Nixon in 1971 was a automatic and instantaneous condemnation of the black community and helped contribute to this legacy of racial injustice. It also authorized and legitimatized a history of violence and incarceration by police that has yet to cease — to this day.
What the the police are now, that’s not protecting. What the police do in the name of enforcement — that’s not serving. What they are doing instead — is the hate we pay for.
It needs to stop. It needs to change.
