Sacramento, CA – “Christmas in September,” Heralds Mayor Kevin Johnson enthusiastically. He’s happy because both the City, and the County of Sacramento received over $19 million in federal grant money for the use of keeping armed, uniformed gang members getting their salaries. Fresno county receives $1.9 Million.
Over 2,000 law enforcement agencies applied for their federal handout this year through the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program of the U.S. Dept of Justice. The Sacramento Sheriff’s Dept making out with the largest chunk of money at over $11 Million for their department. I guess the Justice Department is more interested in furthering the police state in our school systems than funding water allocation resources for our record breaking drought that caused our Governor to declare a State of Emergency?
Not that any of this money would bring rain, but the point is, that money could have been allocated towards better resources than racist cops.
So what is the money funding? If you said training for officers to use less lethal force on citizens, or body cameras? Not even close! The Money will be used to put even more officers and sheriff deputies on the road, and in schools. The underlying reasoning for all of this is to further our police state at the very core, the younger generation.
Police Chief Jerry Dyer on the Fresno County grant:
“These 15 officers will have an immediate impact in some of our most challenged neighborhoods and school campuses by reducing crime and the fear of crime, while facilitating positive activities for our youth.”
Mayor Ashley Swearengin also stated:
“This award will help us bolster a crucial piece of our ‘Restore Fresno’ initiative that is already revitalizing our most vulnerable neighborhoods, It will help our police department increase the efficiency of its community policing efforts and more importantly, provide a more effective response to ensure the safety and security of our homes and our children.”
Basically Swearengin’s idea of ending poverty in our City is having more police in the neighborhoods and schools. Which is a laughable notion in itself, if it didn’t serve the opposite agenda. Spending more money on police is not going to help our economic crisis Ashley! And Dyer actually believes our youth like police officers, and will stop being rowdy and join the police activities after school program?
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Dept. also plans on using this funding to harass the youth. Their grant will fund 25 salaries and benefits for 3 years for deputies on a brand new Youth & Gang task force. I wonder if next year we will see the same County demanding more money for an expansion to their juvenile hall?
What we need to be seeing in America is further budget cuts to police and sheriff’s depts. Or funds allocated towards retraining an officer on how to handle an irate person with a mental illness, or body cams that live stream everything police officers do with our tax dollars.
Instead, all the money we earn from hard work as citizens gets siphoned from our pockets and fed into divisive, and racially biased police depts. that do not change their policies or tactics to actually gain community acceptance. They just want more money.
