Defund the Police!

Consider this situation.

There is a family living in extreme poverty and can barely scrape by. Paying for meals is getting more and more difficult and work is scarce. The family finally feels pressured to steal food just to afford to live. The police are immediately called to hunt down the "robbers" and make them pay the price, either with a fine, prison sentence, or their lives, depending on the demographic of the family.

But why is our money poured into funding the police, whose job is to arrest and oppress? We could just as well direct funds into making food more affordable or helping those in poverty into a better financial position. After this family is arrested, why would any other family going through the exact same thing choose starvation over a chance of survival? There's no productivity in this situation, there's just continuous suffering when we could easily look into another solution that actually recognizes people's motivations and needs before jumping to needless violence.

And if we are going to focus effort on police officers, why not invest in more thorough and professional training? Investigate "dangerous" or "threatening" people before pulling out a gun and shooting an innocent person. Educate them on race and how one race cannot be "more threatening" than another and give penalties to those who obviously discriminate against a demographic of people. Instill into them the idea that there can be, and there often is, another solution than shooting blindly. Provide a reality check: police are shooting "suspicious" people to keep other residents safe, but at what point do they become the ones who we need to keep safe from? This should be a top priority. We all deserve to be given a chance to live in peace and not in fear.