Defund The Police
I've always been a firm believer that police services have been built on the systemic oppression that harms the minorities of communities, and several instances in both the recent and far past have shown me that Ottawa is no exception.
Although I am a middle-class white person, being disabled both physically and mentally has given me some not-so great experiences with the police around here. Even before those incidents, I always feared them greatly, knowing that these services weren't here to protect people like me.
But this experience is tenfold for Black, Brown and Indigenous citizens of Ottawa, who end up being victims of being terrorized by a police force that is still highly funded by the city's officials, and this cycle only continues as the police are given more money. I think plenty about Abdirahman Abdi and how the police killed him due to their lack of care when treating disabled people, and even accused him of having assaulted a woman because he was a Black Autistic man. I think about how even with the funding they had not to long ago when his life was tragically taken away, the police were still ignorant on dealing with the situation. I think about Stacey Bonds, a woman of colour who was kicked and pinned to the floor by an officer, who then proceeded to cut her out of her bra and shirt with several other officers and left her half-naked in her cell for nearly three hours, all after being stopped and questioned by them. I think about Terry Delay, a homeless Indigenous man who was kicked by the same police officer jus a year after, and I think about how the officer had charged Delay with assault when it happened.
When these cases come to mind, it becomes clear that this is a system that has no hope of being reformed when countless officers partake in violent racism against Ottawan BIPOC, especially when the concept of the police force only came into existence through a means of capturing and controlling escaped Black slaves. Instead of continuing to poor millions of more dollars into a police force that has been corrupt from the start, the city should be looking into directing funds to provide its citizens with adequate education, public health care, housing, social services, and communities that are dedicated to helping BIPOC, LGBT, and disabled individuals. By redirecting focus to initiatives that will help marginalized groups attain their basic needs, police presence in the city can be minimized, as crime motivated by unmet needs will be dealt with in a way that is accessible to everyone.
We, the citizens of Ottawa, call for city officials to defund the police, for the greater good of our BIPOC community who have been terrorized enough. Any amount of police brutality is completely unacceptable, and we demand thst change is brought so that we won't ever have to mourn another Black, Brown or Indigenous life lost at the hands of law enforcement.