Public Comment for Agenda Item 5.02 - Military Equipment.
I'm a Camp fire survivor. When my house burned down I lost all the tools in my garage. 30 years of gathering tools, some my Dad gave me. A heartbreaking loss.
Since that day, I have been working on slowly re-building my tool set. Sometimes when browsing around Amazon, I see a tool, I think, ahh, I used to have one of those, I better buy it, never know when I'll need it. I'll find a project where it will be a perfect fit. You know, boys and their toys?
In the Sherriff's listing of military hardware is the story of boys with their toys. Buy them and boys will want to use them. But they're not toys. These are tools of mass destruction. These are tools with only one purpose, to kill us, the Butte county residents.
Buying and or supporting the use of these tools is unconscionable. They seem to represent a plan by the Sherriff's office to go to war against, well, who?
From January 1 to March 30 of 2022, there were 144 mass shootings across the United States. No amount of military equipment was able to stop these horrific crimes. Purchasing the proposed military equipment will NOT make us safer.
The HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of dollars cut out of the precious funds of the Butte county budget to purchase and maintain these tools of mass destruction will be wasted instead of being spent on the DRAMATIC need for the psychological and social needs of our community.
Do NOT approve this waste of resources in our county. Instead, use the money to fashion new and innovative ways to help our homeless population, to help those in our community that are disadvantaged.
Use the funds for police training of de-escalation techniques, with follow up specialized training to address what is learned in the classroom to application of these techniques in the field.
Use the funds to fashion emergency response similar to Eugene, Oregon's successful CAHOOTS project.
Read about CAHOOTS here: https://www.eugene-or.gov/4508/CAHOOTS
CAHOOTS | Eugene, OR Website
What is CAHOOTS? CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets) is a mobile crisis intervention program staffed by White Bird Clinic personnel using City of Eugene vehicles. This relationship has been in place for nearly 30 years and is well embedded in the community. CAHOOTS provides support for EPD personnel by taking on many of the social service type calls for service to include ...
www.eugene-or.gov
Let's be a county of humanists rather than warriors.
George Gold – Chico resident.