To Philadelphia City Council and Mayor Kenney:

Walter Wallace, Jr. should be alive today. This young man — a son, a dad, a twin, a newlywed — should be home with his family. Like many people do, Walter Wallace, Jr. struggled with his mental health. He was in crisis and should have been met with compassion, with care, with support. Instead, he was met with 10 to 14 bullets from the Philadelphia Police Department in front of his mother who loved him and who pleaded for his life.

We are heartbroken and we are furious.

In response to protest and outcry surrounding his murder, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has blamed his killing on a lack of tasers. Now, she’s asking for over $9 million for tasers on top of the $727 million the city has already allocated for the police this year. But tasers are still potentially lethal and present unique risks to people with heart conditions or who have fragile health.

This is the wrong way to go. The police should be held accountable after killing someone, not rewarded with more resources.

We demand that the officers who killed Walter Wallace be fired immediately. They acted recklessly when members of Walter Wallace’s family were trying to deescalate the situation and killed him in front of his family. We can’t afford for these officers to continue patrolling our neighborhoods. We can’t afford them causing more terror and harm.

We demand that the city provide no extra money for useless police reforms. No extra money for tasers. No extra money for sensitivity training. The way to ensure this doesn’t happen again is to reduce the police’s ability to harm members of our community. Instead of handing police more money and more power to cause harm, the city should use those funds to invest in unarmed civilian first responders trained in de-escalation.

We demand that the City ban police from mental health crisis calls. Walter Wallace was in need of a mental health professional to help him through his crisis, but did not get it. People with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed by police. . Trained medical and mental health professionals — not cops — should respond to calls for help during mental health crises in Philadelphia.

Show us with your actions that Black Lives Matter. The police officers who murdered Walter Wallace must be fired. The police must not be rewarded with additional money after killing someone. Police must be banned from mental health crisis calls.