Good Morning Councilors, Friends, Neighbors,
My name is Raymond Chandler III, and I am a public minister in the Quaker tradition. I am here today to talk to you about the public safety training center colloquially referred to as “Cop City Pittsburgh”. As a Quaker, I oppose all forms of violence, including state sanctioned violence. While I recognize the need for police to be well equipped and well trained so that they can best protect our communities, that is not what these training facilities do. These training facilities are designed to train killers, and I do not want a facility that trains killers in my community.
Thou shall not kill. This is a fundemental commandment. It’s so well ingrained in us, from birth, that after World War II, American military researchers estimated that 75 percent of servicemen who saw combat had failed to fire a single shot at the enemy. This is a major problem when you are waging war, but a blessing to behold when you want peace. These kinds of facilities do not promote peace or wellbeing, when their entire purpose is to train people how to kill.
To every single Officer, politican, military service member, Christian, non-believer… it doesn’t matter. I tell you truly that he who takes a single life has committed the worst sin, and he who has taken an innocent life shall be condemned. It doesn’t matter if you wear a uniform. It doesn’t matter if you wear a badge. If you kill another human being, you will spend enternity paying for it unless you repent. Nothing and no one escapes God’s judgement.
In 2020 and 2021, I volunteered as a street medic during the Black Lives Matter protests in Columbus Ohio. I was at the statehouse on May 29th when Congresswoman Joyce Beatty and Columbus, Ohio City Council President Shannon Hardin was pepper sprayed by officers and nearly trampled by their horses. Why did police target Ms. Beatty and Mr Hardin? Maybe it was because they were black and in a suit and the racist cops that attacked them wanted to feel like big men that day, I don’t know. But I know it made front page news.
This is the same police force that still retains Zachary Rosen who curbed stomped an unarmed black man on camera. The same police force that still employs Nicholas Reardon who killed an autistic teenage girl of color who was actively defending herself from an attacker. This is the same police force that Justice Marberly called “Dispicable and tyrranical” before placing a federal injunction on them. The same police force that bear sprayed a woman sitting passively on the street head to toe, while she was in her wedding gown, completely soaking it through. This is the same Fraternity of Police LODGE 9, who protects the murderer Jason Meade which gunned down Casey Goodson Jr. by firing 6 rounds into his back, causing him to collapse and die in his grandmother’s kitchen while holding a sandwhich from Subway and his car keys. This is the same fraternity of men, who in their zeal gunned down Stop Cop City, Forest Defenders – unarmed medics in their tent who died with shots through the palms of their hands. These cops want to come here and build their murder machine? Here?
You want to train these killers here? In our community? So they can kill our kids too? You are fools. These men are cowards. They do not deserve your admiration. They do not deserve your support. They do not deserve more equipment. They do not deserve a training facility which will teach them better ways to enact their cruelty on others.
Make no mistake. I am not naive. I don’t envison a world for police without danger, but let’s be real - they don’t need more toys. They don’t need more guns. They don’t need more violence, and they don’t need to learn more ways to kill us and our children.
In no fair liberty, or just society built on the principals of God and divine justice should we ever in good conscience allow a murder machine like this to bring it’s plauge of violence and hate upon us. Not ever. Not once.
Friends, I oppose this measure. I oppose any facility which will bring such harm and destruction on us, by those who are meant to protect us. We cannot allow this to come to be.
In Reverence,
Raymond Chandler III