This Defund Police video is a collaboration with Project NIA and Blue Seat Studios published to YouTube on October 13, 2022. It is beautifully narrated by Dana La Voz. Find more information about alternatives to policing at DontCallThePolice.com.
Video Transcription
Note: This script was written by Mallory Hanora and Mariame Kaba. All formatting and emphasis for display on this website was done by Tessa Watkins.
People have a lot of opinions about policing and our ideas about policing are shaped by our race, our genders, our class and our parents.
For example, most white people have very little interaction with police. In a recent study, 77% of white people had no contact with police in the previous year. Of those who did, at least half were traffic stops. And in many cases white people initiated contact by calling the police. Since they have little unwanted contact, many white people’s opinions about policing are not based on personal experience.
Dominant culture, especially mass media, sells us the image of “officer friendly” but whose experience is that actually based on?
The same study found that Black people experience excessive force at the hands of police, and more than twice the rate of white people.
Did we have a just and equitable police force and something went wrong? No.
Policing in the South emerged from the slave patrols in the 17- and 1800s that caught and returned runaway enslaved people.
In the West, police departments were formed to keep Native people out of cities built by white settlers.
And in the north, the first municipal police departments in the mid 1800s helped quash labor strikes and riots against the rich and policed public spaces to conform to middle-class white morality around gender and sexuality and exclude poor unhoused or disabled people
Policing in the U.S. began as a system of economic, social, racial, patriarchal, and ableist control. And that is what it still is today. The truth is police don’t do what most people think they do. Police spend more than half of their time responding to non-criminal calls and traffic issues and only 1 to 3% of their time responding to violent crime calls.
Police don’t stop violence.
They respond to violence that has already occurred, and they respond with their own threat of violence and that response is not equitable. When people of color are involved, police often engage violently.
Yet we spend an astronomical amount of money on the police; over 100 billion dollars a year.
Let that sink in.
The demand to defund the police is about minimizing the role and power of police in our society. It’s about demanding that the government stop writing blank checks for racist control, containment, and punishment. Defunding the police is also about recognizing that police do not solve or address any social issues. They do not prevent harm.
What if we took that $100 billion dollars and invested it in our community? What if we had housing, access to healthy food and clean water, healthcare, healing, cooperative businesses, education, childcare, parks, art and community services.
If you already have those things, great, but that’s not the reality every where. Ask yourself, if we have the resources, why doesn’t everyone have this?
I’m Philip H. and I am a White Autistic male and have Sensory processing disorder and PTSD and I was a ward of the state of Texas in CPS custody and went to five different high schools being bounced around from different group homes to group homes to boys ranch.
I Still remember in one of the group boys homes I was in where there was widespread abuse one of the boys died, to this day this still hurts me and bothers me, the things that I have seen and witnessed as a boy in the CPS Foster Care system. I felt like I had no voice, and if I ever spoke up I would get retaliated against and abused more. I have always felt even as a child that the state of Texas is broken and felt no one cares I am just a worthless pebble on the street or number.
After experiencing a traumatic life in the Texas foster care system and abuse I was pushed through high School exempt from all tests and just passed through until I graduated from high school and I was emancipated from CPS and the state of Texas. They basically just open the door and throw you out on your own and I suffered through homelessness and severe marginalization and for the trauma and abuse continued.
I was in University Hospitala in Oklahoma city, Oklahoma on the psychiatric floor or ward and they gave me Electrical Shock Treatments, I was given around 10 different times of Electrical Shock Treatments very early in the mornings. I still have traumatic memories of the scary events And the Anesthesiologist looking over me.
Because I qualified for Medicaid and Medicare and disability income I was lucky to be able to get section 8 voucher and get an apartment for myself. As an autistic adult male I suffered through and continue to suffer through severe discrimination, stereotypes and bullying and also intimidation by apartment management and neighbors for being different and being on welfare and getting benefits and not working because I am disabled. Management and neighbors and those in authority take advantage of the fact that I have been low income and have limited means and know that I cannot afford advocacy and exploit my situation and behave predatorial.
In Wichita Falls, Texas there’s virtually no advocacy for disabled adult males and those in authority are aware of this and it works to their advantage. One of the worst laws I feel was ever written was the violence against women act, it is a predatorial and a vindictively written law that is used as a tool to harass, retaliate and intimidate and get back at disabled adult males like myself. I have been threatened with the violence against women’s act by management and neighbors when they have tried to get rid of me because I am disabled (different) and they’re looking for a way, a tool to get rid of me and get me kicked off section 8 and other benefits. This is an act when management and or neighbors are hunting someone. Police and others in authority often play a part in this predatorial behavior.
I live alone by myself and have no family, I often get bullied and harassed due to my disability because I have difficulty communicating with others and lots of times freeze and my brain locks up and I do not know what to say and I have been labeled and called names like weird, strange, retard, nut job, welfare leech, and asked when am I going to get off the government tit? by apartment management and neighbors and those in authority. Being a disabled adult, extremely low income person on a very limited budget on disability I have a lot to lose.
The Wichita Falls, Texas Police department have a broken, predatorial program that is extremely predatorial called the Crime Free Housing Program. The Wichita Falls, Texas Police Crime Free Housing Program is a program where Wichita Falls Police department encourages Apartment Complex in Wichita County to join their Crime Free Housing Program and encourages Apartment Complexes to join their Crime Free Housing Program and gives Apartment Complexes incentives to join their program and anytime the police are called on a tenant or a tenant comes in contact with the police the police fill out a yellow card on that tenant also called a contact card. If a tenant gets three yellow cards or contact cards they can be evicted, no matter what it does not matter. So if a neighbor or someone does not like a tenant and is trying to use the police as a tool to punish a tenant or get rid of a tenant, all they have to do is call the police and a yellow card is issued and after three yellow cards an innocent person, a tenant can become evicted and lose their home, their apartment.
Also all this takes is a crooked police officer or a bad police officer that is vindictive and a vindictive neighbor and if a tenant is on section 8 they can be kicked off section 8 and lose their voucher benefit and which can lead to homelessness. There are and lots of times tenants that do not have section 8 that are either jealous that another tenant has section 8 or is so extremely conservative that they hate disabled adult males people that are on welfare or section 8 and will try to get them kicked off their benefits.
I feel this is a bad program and detrimental to disabled adults with Autisms civil rights and civil liberties. I feel that it’s not due to ignorance toward disabilities but it is there are some people that just do not care about others that are disabled and are cold-hearted and have a hate and judgmental toward people that get welfare benefits. I have found that this is often the case with conservatives and Republicans.
I have experienced as an adult with Autism and that is disabled that the Americans with Disability Act often gets ignored and violated and no one follows the ADA especially if you are a disabled person with an Invisible Disability and you’re not in a wheelchair. I feel like the ADA needs to be rewritten and overhauled, I feel the ADA is extremely weak and not specific enough and doesn’t include people with invisible disabilities enough and have specifics and housing and section 8 laws and in the community in private businesses and restaurants.
As an adult male with Autism I have suffered and endured intense discrimination, bullying in this treatment by those who are supposed to protect me. Discrimination in section 8 housing by landlord and management and neighbors those in authority towards disabled people is widespread and real and has been allowed to flourish and grow and continue to take place and happen under Governor Greg Abbott’s predatorial and failed leadership and former Republican governors discriminatory and failed leadership that empowers enables predatorial, discriminatorial behavior. There has to be strict, drastic, severe change and consequences to protect Autistic disabled adults and invisible disability and consequences and accountability and created in a thoughtful manner.
I am the way God made me and I cannot change the way I was made. I cannot change my disabilities and become neurotypical. Autistic males and disabled males with indivisible disabilities are the most underserved population in the state of Texas. Especially Autistic males who have been emancipated from the Texas CPS foster care system and have No family and no support group. For an autistic adult male like myself I have no way to get a social worker or have a caseworker. There is no option in the state of Texas for myself to have a caseworker or social worker for help navigating difficult and abusive situations. There is no state agency that will get involved or advocacy that will get involved if it does not involve family. The only way a state agency or advocacy will get involved if it is family members abuse and I have no family. The local adult protective Services treats me like I am a burden and wasting their time and say they cannot help me do not reach back out. And then a PS complains about me to the apartment management and authorities telling them what I said and then I get retaliated against even worse.
After I was emancipated from CPS custody, I became homeless I was falsely accused and arrested and did not know what to do and was confused and bewildered and docile. I was taking advantage of by the police and the DA, district attorney’s office and they told me that I should plead nolo contendere and I did not know what that meant and they told me that it meant that I am not guilty so I agreed and went along with what they suggested. I realize now that they were deceiving me and taking advantage of me and I made the worst mistake of my life.
Today I have an assault family violence, causing bodily injury on my records and on my name, where my older half brother told the police that I pushed him and his back was hurting. One of the police officers went to school or high school with my older half brother and they knew each other. This record on my name and Stain haunts me everyday. Thank you. Philip H.
Thank you for sharing your story. I am so sorry this happened to you.
I would argue who the most underserved populations are, certainly being autistic puts you at a disadvantage in the eyes of the hegemony. But if we’re looking at the intersection of autism and gender, I would say the autistic cis male is more privileged than the autistic women, autistic enbies, and the autistic trans people.