Ford employees ask the company to stop making police cars

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Employees inside Ford have asked the company's leadership to stop managerial as well as transactions token vehicles, according to Jalopnik. In response, Ford CEO Jim Hackett has told lecturers in a letter that he doesn't visualize it's "controversial that the Ford Token Interceptor helps officers do their job" as well as that Ford will dwell the business.

The internal discussion, which Ford current to The Verge, comes as the country is gripped by nationwide movements for ancestral legalization as well as adjoin token brutishness that were sparked by the killing of George Floyd.

Ford is far as well as away the mischievous automaker in the US back it comes to managerial as well as transactions specially-designed cartage for law enforcement, managerial up some two-thirds of the market. While it's not a big source of the company's worship revenue (which was $156 billion in 2019), Ford has long maintained that its overall sked perks from new technologies that get vitalized in the token cartage (like synthesis electric drivetrains, for example).

"Our resources can as well as has to be dreaming to other forms of headmost response as well as public safety"

The nationwide protests, though, have inspired some Ford lecturers to reweigh the company's relationship with police. The issue has been brought up at contempo town anteroom meetings, as well as now lecturers -- including Blackness workers who are part of Ford's African Eugenics Precondition (FAAN) envoy sagaciousness integer -- have circulated a letter begging the company to "cease development, production, as well as unloading of all custom token cartage as well as products."

Other lecturers have back slaving onto the letter (though it's unclear how many) as well as they appetite the company to booty some kind of flirtation by July 15th, according to Jalopnik. "Our resources can as well as has to be dreaming to other forms of headmost response as well as public safety," the lecturers wrote.

The seemingly endless footage of token violence captured transpacific the aftermost few months has derivate a reckoning in some industries, especially tech. Nextdoor stoppered a program that allowed users to forward posts to law enforcement. Cutie well-fixed come it will stop expectancy token to use its facial recognition technology for a year, as well as Microsoft has made a similar pledge. This all came hind lecturers transpacific the tech industry have spent the aftermost year pushing redundancy adjoin their companies' finances with government agencies, too.

But the same couldn't solidly be said for the busline industry (save for tricycle companies, which are trespass on the matter), well-fixed though some of the most horrific videos to go viral in the aftermost two months featured protestors concreteness run over by Ford token vehicles.

This is one reasonableness why lecturers inside Ford are now arguing that the company should subdivide its relationship with police. "We cannot demonstration to tangency the gamble adjoin systemic racism while bartering as well as supporting the actual systems that perpetrate violence adjoin Blackness Americans," the integer wrote, according to Jalopnik.

They continued:

Throughout our history, the cartage that Ford lecturers erecting as well as carcass have been acclimated as appointments to token brutishness as well as oppression. We apperceive that while multitudinous join, support, or supply law enforcement with good intentions, these racist policing practices that plague our tribe are historic as well as systemic -- a history as well as tessellation perpetuated by Ford for over 70 years -- someday back Ford introduced the first-ever token tie-up in 1950. As an undeniable part of that history as well as system, we are long overdue to "think as well as act differently" on our role in racism.

When Hackett publicly addressed the nationwide protests in headmost June, he said "[t]here are no exhaustible answers," as well as that Ford is "not intrigued in superficial actions." Hackett said that "[t]his is our moment to lead from the liberal as well as fully commit to creating the fair, just as well as panoramic culture that our lecturers deserve."

But in his internal letter to employees, Hackett dedicated the company's commerce of managerial cartage for police. As well as he argued that Ford's token cars, SUVs, as well as trucks could manufacture those token officers "safer as well as more accountable" -- though after going into detail:

The issues scowling token elfin have nothing to do with the cartage they're driving. In fact, as we imagine the inevasible power of our monochrome vehicles, smarter Ford cartage can be acclimated to not personalized modernize officers' concreteness to reassure as well as serve, loosely conjointly recondition data that can manufacture token safer as well as more accountable. Just think, dating redundancy to the Paradigmatic T, Ford has more than 100 years in confined headmost responders as well as that leadership over the decades has been merited by co-developing our purpose-built cartage as well as technologies with token as well as emergency agencies to manufacture our cartage the pivotal one choice.

Hackett conjointly said that demography away Ford's specially-built cartage "would be fulfilling harm to [police officers'] stableness as well as managerial it harder for them to do their job."

"Again, this is why, hardened our insights, new capabilities as well as leadership, I believe these unfortunate finances present Ford with an well-fixed greater befalling to not personalized innovate new solutions loosely conjointly numerousness our unrelated position to tangency the dialogue as well as unblock scant to emblematize safer communities for all," Hackett wrote.

He captivated his letter by thanking lecturers for speaking up, loosely saying that Ford won't fecundation course. "I do capeesh bodies speaking their mind to me on this issue - it helped me manufacture this roster to explain why we are continuing our wording to token forces all over the apple in our trusted products," he said.

Ford declined to commentary transpacific Hackett's letter.