WRPS

[danbrotherston]

Is cancelling this project a victory?

I'm not a visible minority, so I am speaking from a position of not-true-understanding - I acknowledge this.

There was a time that the LGBQT+ community was persecuted by the police services.  Relationships were far from good.  Police services have worked on those relationships, and one small token was the PRIDE cruiser that was part of our traffic branch.  Did the cruiser solve any issues, no... but it was a public acknowledgement that the service valued that community.  Are LGBTQ+ relationships with the police perfect?  I doubt it... but its a more welcoming service now than it was then.

This cruiser (to me) is the same.  Does it solve any wrongs?  Hell no.  Is it a small step towards a change that is in process.

Yes, it is a victory.

"Did the cruiser solve any issues, no"...So by definition it isn't a solution ot anything.

For one, we, unlike the police, should listen to the communities which are the victims of police bias. They are telling us unequicably that this cruiser is a bad idea.

It respresents more spending by the police, more proof their budget is over inflated, more money that should have gone into actual resources to help our community.

It's a bandaid for cancer, the cruiser is there because the police have bias problems, instead of solving those problems they put this cruiser together? Why? So WHITE people (those who aren't the target of police violence) feel better? Certainly it doesn't help those communities.

To me, this cruiser shows how big the problem is, the police pretend they are engaging with the community, but still thought this was a good idea, it's clear they either aren't consulting, or aren't listening to the communities that their bias already makes them more likely to harm.

For bonus point, the art is done in the style of a local activist artist, but who did not actually get to do the work (and if she was asked, she would have explained why it was a bad idea), in fact, nobody knows who did the work, or how much they were paid.

Even worse, the cancellation statement confirms all this. Their statement "We're sorry that people were offended"... and "This is being cancelled, but we'll continue..." They aren't even looking at why this failed, why people are upset, why they apparently didn't know people would be upset. They're sorry that people don't like it, but begrudingly will stop doing it, but won't change anything else.

I don't know much about the history of police in Pride, but given that they were excluded from the parade in the past, I'm guessing not all LGBTQ community feel good about police, but even if they did, the pride cruiser is something that we're seeing in the late 2010s, and if I understand correctly, that's decades after it came to light the harm the police did to the LGBTQ community. I suspect a pride cruiser would not have been well received in the 80s and 90s.

Ultimately, the thing that bugs me the most about this is this is money that could have been spent in our community on things which might actually solve our problems. Instead the police are siphoning away the plurality of our budget and leaving us without needed services. In a time when major crimes are at historic lows, but which police are being asked to take over more and more duties in our community as a result of disinvestment in our social supports, and using that to justify an ever inflating budget.