IC organizers for Black Lives Matter explain what ‘defund the police’ actually means
EL CENTRO, Calif. (KYMA, KECY) - The Black Lives Matter (BLM) chapters throughout the country have been advocating to 'defund the police.
In Los Angeles, the BLM chapter and protesters have already managed to remove 150 million from the 3 billion dollar police department budget.
The local BLM chapter in Imperial County explains what exactly this initiative is.
"Defunding the police department is important because what it does is re-allocates those funds from the police department to the community primary communities of color to re-invest those money's in two things like mental health providers," said Hilton Smith of Imperial County's BLM.
He emphasis defunding is refunding other programs that have had a decline in their budgets like education.
"We need to de-militarize our police departments there is a lot of money going in for military surpluses given to local police departments from the government all that money can be re-allocated to the community to re-invest in our community. "
The 1033 program signed and expanded by then-president Bill Clinton transfers excess military equipment to civilian law enforcement agencies.
The program legally requires the Department of Defense to make various items of equipment available to local law enforcement.
"If you have a hammer everything is going to look like a nail so you're going to use so it's not necessary to use military equipment on the population, the community you serve."
Through this program, local law enforcement agencies have acquired rifles, armored vehicles, forced entry tools, bomb suits, 50 caliber machine gun that shoots bullets powerful enough to blast through the buildings on multiple city blocks.
The El Centro police department who attended the Imperial County Black Lives Matter protest has yet to comment on this matter.
