The Fourth of July was riddled in violence this year. A holiday that is normally known for its massive celebrations and elaborate displays of fireworks left many families in mourning following a spree of deaths. Protesters are now saying that the police failed to protect the public and is using that to further their ‘defund the police’ movement.
A grandfather to one of the victims disagrees with the BLM movement and says that defunding the police is ‘not going to work’. He lost his 11-year-old grandson over the weekend to a stray bullet but managed to have the strength and courage to come out in support of the police.
“You can’t take money from the police department,” John Ayala, the founder of D.C.’s Guardian Angels chapter, explained.
“We need the police. You take the police from there and we wind up having less police officers in the street and less detectives. It’s not going to work. Crime is going to get worse…if you start having less police officers, who’s going to come when there is a need for police services?”
Ayala made the comment two days after his young grandson, Davon McNeal, was gunned down while grabbing a phone charger on the way to a community cookout.
According to Fox News, Washington D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham told reporters late Saturday that about five adult men shot up the area, striking McNeal, who later died at a hospital. The cause of the shooting is not immediately clear, but D.C. police are asking for the public’s help in gathering information, including any sightings of a black car they say fled a nearby alley.
“I think in the cities, you have a lot of people that just do not value life at this time,” Ayala said. “They don’t realize that when you take a life, that life is not coming back.”
Ayala is just one of 5 other families in touring following a spree of violence over the 4th of July weekend that resulted in the deaths of 6 young children. Reports say the youngest victim was only 6 years old.
While BLM activists are calling to defund the police, Ayala warns that that would be a “big mistake”:
“Before going to go after the police officers when they hurt someone that looks like me, they need to go after the people that look like me that hurt people that look like me,” he said.
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The Guardian Angels is a non-profit international volunteer organization of unarmed crime prevention. The Guardian Angels organization was founded February 13, 1979, in New York City by Curtis Sliwa. It later spread to over 130 cities and 13 countries worldwide.
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