Law enforcement and politicians have donated money to murderers...

...Including, at minimum, one Virginia law enforcement officer, a gentleman who is tasked with investigating abuses by police officers.

It has become more than glaringly obvious that this is why we feel we cannot trust law-enforcement. Nor should we. It is demonstrably dangerous to do so. If the teargassing, tank deployment, aiming fully loaded assault rifles into the faces of completely peaceful protesters didn’t show you that we have a problem here in Richmond, I hope that you see that we have a problem now.

Please sign my petition if you think that City Council should initiate a transparent review of whether or not we are employing white supremacists and/or those who provide aid, support, and comfort to domestic terrorists:

https://www.change.org/NoRoomForHateinTheRPD

Going forward, we should obviously include such vetting in our hiring practices and training practices.

***

With horror, and yes, even a little bit of surprise, I read that law enforcement officers had actually sent money to Kyle Rittenhouse, a young man accused of murdering two people during last year’s uprising against the unjust system of policing we are enduring in the United States.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/16/us-police-officers-public-officials-crowdfunding-website-data-breach

“One donation for $25, made on 3 September last year, was made anonymously, but associated with the official email address for Sgt William Kelly, who currently serves as the executive officer of internal affairs in the Norfolk police department in Virginia.

That donation also carried a comment, reading: “God bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

The comment continued: “Every rank and file police officer supports you. Don’t be discouraged by actions of the political class of law enforcement leadership.”

Black Amercians have always lived with the truth that law enforcement is riddled with white supremacists, domestic terrorists, and those who “merely” support the most hateful elements of society.

We had hoped that by training our own young men and women to enter the ranks of law-enforcement that this could change.

Unfortunately what we’re learning, what the young progressives and radicals are teaching us, is that the system itself has its genesis in slave catchers and evolved into a system which has the explicit goal of over-policing Black bodies and constraining the lives and happiness of Black people, and that this system will stop at nothing - even carrying out pretrial, extrajudicial executions - in order to attain its ends. 

Unfortunately - and I say this is a Black woman who happily embraces white people as members of her family and who countless white friends, coworkers, and former student - even white people get caught in the net of an out of control policing system – white people, particularly those suffering from mental health concerns, are also executed by the police with regularity. 

This is how racism damages everyone. I encourage you to read the recent publication, “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Togethe.”

While insisting that we interrogate, examine, and, yes, reform the on-boarding process for Richmond Police Department officers might seem like incrementalism to our younger citizens, it’s a necessary step, because abolition won’t come anytime soon.

Please sign and share my petition widely.