Whose Side are You on? A Note to Local Law Enforcement
It’s past time for SLO County’s elected leaders to do their most important job – to protect the health and welfare of the people they represent.
They must demand that our local law enforcement agencies tell us, the people who pay them, what they plan to do when the state-sanctioned violence besetting the American people comes to our streets.
The kidnappings by Trump’s masked, unidentified, plain-clothed secret police are terrorizing our communities. When our friends and neighbors – immigrants and American citizens alike – are disappeared, it destroys trust between the people and the officers we pay to protect and serve us.
We’ve seen the sickening videos: heavily armed goons ripping moms from their weeping children, chasing farm workers through fields, punching harmless, defenseless old men, violently shackling women, gleefully traumatizing entire communities like it’s a video game.
These raging, steroid-jacked monsters are out of control, threatening arrest and pointing loaded guns at anyone who loudly objects or records their atrocities.
These violent affronts to our freedoms, the law, and our democracy are heading in our direction. Now those responsible for civilian oversight of local law enforcement must take action – before it’s too late.
Residents of SLO County must pressure their elected leaders to summon their police chiefs and sheriff and require them to stand before the public and answer these simple questions:
Whose side are you on, the people you’re paid to protect and serve, or the masked, armed interlopers?
If we call 911 asking for protection against an unidentified armed gang threatening violence, will you come to our aid?
Can we count on you to force these thugs to identify themselves?
How are we to know which “law enforcement” character is real and which is an imposter, like the killer in Minnesota: masked, no identifying insignia, refusing to talk?
Or will you claim neutrality, stand by and watch while we’re threatened, abused, and terrorized by what looks like unprofessional, untrained, violence-craving bounty hunters?
SLO County law enforcement, including our elected County Sheriff, must address these questions now, before the mayhem begins here. Each local law enforcement agency must give a public account of their stance before the regime’s violence reaches our doors.
Local law enforcement has acted in good faith during every street rally in SLO County since March. Now every SLO County resident must know what to expect from those we pay to protect and serve us.
We have the power to get answers. Call your city manager, city council members, and county supervisor. Speak up during the public comment period during their meetings. Call for action. Ask them to put this item on their next meeting agenda. They should have done it already, on their own, but now it’s up to us, the people, to force the issue.
Whose side are our officers on? We have a right to know.
Yours for democracy,
Tom Fulks
Chair SLOCDP | chair@slocdp.org