Considerations for racial justice policies
To the Editor:
All candidates for office: please, please reimagine justice for everyone and provide us a clear and comprehensive reform policy on racial injustice in our county, state and nation. I have talked to African-American persons who have been beaten by the police for calling 911 and a Hispanic pulled by police for doing nothing wrong but taken in with a charge of resisting arrest because he used his cell phone to call his wife. I also know an African-American whose transportation was taken and never returned by police.
Here are a few suggestions that might help.
• Shift 33 percent of police funding to creating parks and jobs in low income and black communities.
• Take police out of the schools and replace them with social workers.
• Outlaw designation of black neighborhoods as high risk.
• Outlaw police using choke holds and killing people who are unarmed and educate citizens.
• Reform our district attorneys from feeding on the poor to up their conviction numbers.
• Outlaw the taking of vehicles by police.
• Outlaw taking licenses until the poor pay egregious fines.
• Stop the bond system.
• Take away the military toys from our police and training them to consider us enemies and threats.
• Deny the ability of police departments to keep their cameras from public view.
• Release low impact crime violators from prison. Insure the percentage of black prisoners to their population reflects the same percentage as a percentage of white prisoners to white population.
• Review all black convictions to determine how many are miscarriages of justice. Remember Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy.
• Retrain police to be service providers — not warriors —and enhance their awareness of their explicit and implicit bias.
• Fire and charge any police person who kills someone for a low level crime, someone who is unarmed and the disabled who could be engaged using simple social skills.
Ron Robinson
Sylva
