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The leader of the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement wants the “complete abolition” of the police department to be completed in five years.
Activist YahNé Ndgo told Fox News on Tuesday that Black Lives Matter Philadelphia has a five-year-plan to accomplish the goal of ridding the city of law enforcement personnel.
“One of the things that we are demanding over five years is the complete abolition. We don’t want to see any police in our community,” Ndgo told Fox News, explaining the group’s radical plan in the wake of other calls across the nation to either defund – or completely dismantle – police departments.
“Over the course of those five years, it gives time for the community to begin to build what is needed. We aren’t looking to leave any kind of vacancy around the issue of safety,” the writer and singer added.
Ndgo, who is also a coordinating committee member of the Black Alliance for Peace, pointed to what she sees as a cycle of poverty leading to crimes as well as drug use, and contended that addressing drug addictions will make a significant impact on society.
“As we address these particular concerns, and at the same time build restorative justice practices, and build out our mental health response teams, and build medic responses,” she said, “[These are] responses that really actually deal with the issues that are in place. Then we will have less crime anyway.”
The BLM group is advocating that funds which would have been used by the city’s police department could be applied in other areas in the community.
“There are plenty of people who have been murdered as a result of mental health checks. The police came, and then they murdered the person, even though the person was acting erratically, which is what you would expect of a person who’s having a mental health crisis,” Ndgo said.
“Domestic confrontations are also things that police are often called for. And these are kinds of situations that can be handled by different kinds of professionals. As it relates to more violent crime, there would still be trained individuals who are prepared to handle those kinds of situations,” she added.
Ndgo’s view is that the police are “centered around the ruling class and protection of the ruling class and being an extension of the system of oppression.”
“Quite often, if there is violence happening, by the time the police arrive, that has already occurred and particularly in poor neighborhoods and in black and brown communities. So the police are not really a resource for preventing that kind of crime from happening. Just a response,” she told Fox News.
“We also recognize that hunger, unnecessary hunger, is a form of unnecessary homelessness,” she explained, “when you have massive numbers of properties that are empty, and then we have people who are all over the city. We see that also as violence.
“Another example is the fact that a lot of our schools are not safe for our children. There is lead pipes in a lot of the schools. So students are being expected to learn in environmentally hazardous places, those are things that we see as violence,” she said.
Ndgo claimed that the group’s “demands to decrease the police budget” and other requests have been met with responses that are just a sort of “smoke and mirrors.” She also noted that BLM Philadelphia is looking to make changes to federal policies, pointing to President Donald Trump’s authority to call in the National Guard.
“You see now, the president can have any kind of mindset. And then have a local military force at his or her disposal in order to push that mindset onto communities,” Ngdo said.
“That would be one thing really important, to transform that policy,” she said, arguing for the “federal government to actually prioritize the financial discrepancies and inequities in all of our communities.”
“The wealth of the nation is very much into the hands of a very small group of people,” Ngdo claimed.
The Philadelphia chapter is also looking to end federal funds being given to local police departments as well as ending programs led by the Department of Defense.
“(Defunding) these particular programs would provide massive amounts of resources for the communities in the United States, and that would mitigate most of the problems that create the so-called problem of crime,” Ngdo said.
Weeks of civil unrest and tensions in the nation in what Ndgo called an “ongoing state of rebellion” are not necessarily a bad thing in the eyes of the BLM group as the activist said “people have finally reached their limit.”
“People are in a place where they’re having to really be pushed to make a decision about what kind of person they want to be and what side do they want to stand on in history,” she said. “And a lot of people have decided that they want to stand on the side of justice, and they want to figure out how to do that.”
For all the arguments defending the plan to abolish the police, the BLM chapter was already seeing opposition to the idea on social media.
@YahNeNdgo @BLMPhilly
Why isn’t anyone working on a 5yr plan to eliminate illegal drug sales, gang violence, failing schools, poor infrastructure, and general nastiness?
No cops means MORE crime, ya idiot.— dannomite1122 (@dannomite1122) July 8, 2020
@YahNeNdgo We The People are demanding over five years that you and every other BLM member leave the US.
— Jim (@Pauley_Jim1) July 8, 2020
THAT LADY YAHNE NDGO FROM BLM WANTS TO COMPLETELY ABOLISH POLICE…….
ARE THERE ANY DEMOCRATS OUT THERE THAT CAN TELL HER SHE IS FULL OF IT!!
SHE IS CRAZY!!
AND NO PELOSI NOR SCHUMMER OR ANYBODY FROM THE LEFT WILL RAISE A VOICE!
WE ALL GREW UP WITH POLICE!!
— JESUS GONZALEZ (@Jess1Rusty) July 8, 2020
@YahNeNdgo why don’t you focus your energy on de escalating the violence in the poor neighborhoods. While your efforts are forcing less police response black lives are taking black lives at an alarming rate
— Tom Ciorciari (@TommyTwo_times) July 8, 2020
3 of 3 — Besides accepting moneys to support your cause from International organizations of terror does not help your cause; it actually hinders it greatly. Clean up your own act before trying to clean up something else!
— Old Man With A Pen #TheGreatAmericanComeback (@ScottHendrick49) July 8, 2020
Reading the idiocy put forward by this person is just scary.
But the fact that #msm & even #foxnews gives her a platform to spew her hatefilled ideologies is truly disturbing.
I am done. Just deport these people.— Confusion (@StuckInAMaise) July 8, 2020
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.
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