In a place where crime runs free, where those in power fight to avoid prosecution, a new method to crack down on crime has emerged. Starting in October, San Francisco will fund its criminals, up to $300 per month—of law-abiding citizen’s tax money—not to shoot other people, or get shot themselves.
According to the San Francisco Examiner, participants can earn up to $200 extra per month, simply by hitting “program milestones” – like “job interviews, complying with probation sentences, or consistently meeting with a mentor”, according to the report.
Known as the “Dream Keeper Fellowship” [Crime Funding], “The initiative will pair participants with newly hired life coaches from the Street Violence Intervention Program, known as SVIP, who will help the them make the right choices and access services.”
“We know that $500 in San Francisco is not a significant amount of money,” stated Sheryl Davis, executive director of the Human Rights Commission, and an advocate of the crime funding program. “But if it’s enough to get you in to talk to folks, and be able to make a plan for your life, then that’s huge.”
The program will start off with just 10 participants in October, and then expand benefits to another 30 high-risk individuals by the end of the year. Officials have already hired two life coaches for the program.
“What we are actually doing is trying to address the root causes of some of what’s happened,” said Davis. “Six thousand dollars per person, when you look at it annually, is nothing if it helps deter criminal activity compared to the amount of money it costs to incarcerate someone, let alone the impact of the activity itself.”
The program, funded in part by the “Dream Keeper Initiative” established by Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Shamann Walton to “divert funding from the police”, is being rolled out by the Human Rights Commission and Office of Economic and Workforce Development.
“My desire is to get to them, not to just make an arrest, but to get to them and to try and figure out if they would be willing to work with us on something that is an alternative,” said Breed at a Violence Prevention Summit earlier this month. “We can’t just put them in a program without making sure that they have money, without making sure that they have something to take care of themselves.”
“Providing individuals with resources to survive and increase their options for success is integral in changing the trends of increased violence,” said Walton, adding “This is the perfect time for this strategy.”
This is San Francisco’s attempt to direct tax money from going to the SFPD. While progressive’s want to defund the police, San Francisco now even goes a step further, and wants to fund its criminals. This move will ultimately result in the inactive criminal hiring other people to commit crimes for them, on their behalf, or working closely with those who do commit crimes on a regular basis.
Should it be up to the citizens who pay their taxes to determine where that money goes? Should taxpayer money be used to fund criminals who are well known to destroy the community and make it a less safe place to live? Americans should have to freedoms to exist, and their tax money should provide them with that protection. How does that work in this case, and how will it benefit society, as more and more criminals begin to join this “temporary measure”? What other states will adopt this “philosophy”?
As the American government has already funded the Taliban’s newest group of fighters in Afghanistan, providing the Taliban an entire country, could this be the start of a domestic iteration of that thought process throughout America?
JMBK.NEWS 