In a recent press release from the Stop Police Terror Project DC, Eugene Puryear charges “the Mayor has sought a massive expansion of police powers to detain and arrest those on probation or parole. They claim they will focus only on ‘violent criminals.’ This raises two questions, first: where is the evidence that this population of people is uniquely responsible for said murders? Secondly, why, if it is just ‘a few,’ do we need blanket legal changes that criminalize and target wide swaths of Returning Citizens trying to rebuild their lives?”
In addition, to what extent can we link the Mayor’s initiative to gentrification and ethnically cleansing Washington, DC so that the new millennial Whites tired of commuting and returning to the city can be protected from “Black crime”? This campaign, while promulgated by a Black female, is reminiscent of the racist Reagan/Nixon Administrations “War on Drugs” that was really a war on the Black community.
The Mayor espouses the need for an increased police presence in the Black community, yet her solution is to harken back to a time of shame and institute her own brand of the Fugitives Act. She has not stated concrete plans to move a segment of the black community out of poverty and into educational and work opportunities. She is not giving the already demoralized Washington D.C. Black community a sense of hope, fairness and justice, but instead, she is attempting to implement a policy that does the opposite. Will New York, Detroit, Ferguson, Baltimore or California be next?