awkword (Phil Mandelbaum) Profile picture
Hip Hop Artist | Sociologist | Organizer | Journalist | Strategist | Co-Founder, @TENDEMANDS • https://t.co/u8Uk4MJxGC • https://t.co/NBHExQszGg

Sep 24, 2022, 18 tweets

Police abolishing themselves

Across the country, police violence cases are settled USING TAXPAYER MONEY.

A March 22 @washingtonpost investigation confirmed $3.2+ billion spent in just 10 years to ‘resolve’ 40,000 claims at 25 of the US’s largest police and sheriff’s departments

washingtonpost.com/investigations…

“It’s an indictment on… police and their priorities that the voice of their insurers spoke louder than human lives”

The @TENDEMANDS require all costs of police-related lawsuits be covered by officer pensions and/or personal liability insurance

tenforjustice.com/demands

In Chicago, where a Black woman Democratic mayor is more worried about losing an election to a Black challenger than she is about her cops killing innocent Black community members

Taxpayers will pay $25 million — or 30% of the City’s *entire* budget — to resolve *3* police suits

Coupled with all this, we sure are giving LOTS of money to law enforcement

Now add in the cash bail, ticketing and fines, and fees for your own probation and 24/7 electronic surveillance… and you’ve got quite the racket

But why stop there? Cops also steal more from *us* than all of *our* robberies combined

Police misconduct has cost taxpayers about $3 BILLION since 2010

NYC: where you pay twice for police brutality

LAPD has killed at least 1 person per week for 20+ straight years

LAPD cost taxpayers $250 million to settle legal claims from 2016 through 2021 alone

And yet one officer makes about $300,000 in one year

Prisons and jails collude with phone companies by price gouging phone calls between caged human beings and their families

Doubling down on the economic damage done to criminalized communities

Cages aren’t constructed to rehabilitate, but to disappear — for profit

And the more damaged people are by their caging, the more likely they are to return (churn)

So they only pay incarcerated workers 50 cents an hour on average — shrinking opportunities for outside connection

The War on Drugs?

Well, like police violence payouts, it’s a war on a taxpayers

And like police themselves, it only serves the rich

Militarization?

No, letting your little local PD collect weapons of war for use on you and your neighbors

Will NOT reduce your tax bill, or the millions or billions your town or city gives each year to police to NOT prevent crime

And only solve 2% of crimes that occur

Now ponder how much time police spend harassing, robbing, beating and arresting houseless people:

It’s probably their number-one job (after texting their friends and gambling online)

And it’s a vicious, useless cycle that costs the victims their dignity and taxpayers millions

That extra money you gave your local police for training?

Welp, they’re using that money to learn how to more instinctually and efficiently dehumanize and murder you

And no, that’s not hyperbole

The death penalty HAS to be a good investment, right!?

I mean, we get to kill them instead of letting them use prison resources for life!

No. No it isn’t.

The #DeathPenalty is just another violation of international law (like solitary) — and perhaps the greatest grift of all

How do cops ensure we keep covering their asses?

Unions.
Foundations.
Paid-off politicians.
Uninformed reformers.
The copaganda machine.

And making life nearly impossible for anyone who even once gets caught in their clutches.

@CivRightsCorps’s own @equalityAlec explains:

“How much money are we paying right now so you’ll beat us down?”



Buy it anywhere digital music is sold — and the proceeds will be donated to @Mvmnt4BlkLives

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