After watching my friend get gunned down on repeat, something broke inside of me. I watched as the man who was an amazing guitar player, an slick basketball player, a man I had looked up to, learned from, wanted to be like, I watched as they ERASED him.

And it wasn't just the bullets and the dogs they sicced on him. The media did their best to paint the police as heroes. My friend went from being an accomplished musician to "homeless" (he wasn't). He went from loving father to "criminal with an arrest record".

I watched them drag him and no one would speak up for him. I watched as the officers who cleared him were exonerated of a murder charge they never received and there was nothing I could do. That anyone could do. His wife is a widow now, raising his daughter alone.

In the end that's the true story: a father, son, and brother were taken and no one gave a damn because he was Black. I can never forgive that. It pushed me to further into a place I've already been. Where as soon as a anyone puts on a badge, they become a faceless enemy.

I can't feel empathy for them or their families because they never showed any for mine. I can't afford to shed tears for the terrorists of my community when so many of my own are in the ground because of them. Calling for a defunding of the police is an act of restraint.

After 9/11, America invaded multiple countries looking to kill their terrorists and collectively we cheered it. America wages a vindictive war against "terror" to this day. The police have been terrorizing our community for 100s of years. Are we not justified in fighting back?

WE pay them. WE bankroll their weaponry. WE fill their pensions, often at the expense of our own. Yet we are killed, assaulted, and treated as if we are less-than. How are we not justified in taking the same stance as America and refusing to negotiate with terrorists?

I'm convinced that many are against defunding the police and redistributing funds to the communities they terrorized because it would again involve admitting that white America is oppressive to BIPoC and this country can't stomach that.

The people in power would do well to ask themselves: "What happens when BIPOC stop attempting to negotiate?" We negotiated on statues. Now we're tearing them down. How long before we decide to tear down the racist systems holding us back? How long can justice be denied?