October marked 150 days of protests in Seattle over racial injustice and police brutality but it seems that all the demonstrations and efforts by activists in the city didn’t result in much change when it came to the police department.
Seven out of nine Seattle City Council members pledged to defund the city’s police department by 50 percent, but when it came down to the vote, the council voted 8-1 to cut the police budget by just less than 20 percent, Komo News reported.
Protestors have been calling on leaders around the country to defund the police for years, but especially since the May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd while in police custody.
Activists want leaders to reallocate money from police departments’ multimillion-or-billion-dollar budgets and reinvest it in community services.
“Defund police by 50 percent was a slogan, and it was an empty and misleading slogan,” said Seattle Councilwoman Debra Juarez, one of two council members who did not make the 50-percent pledge. “It caused damage, it caused pain, it caused trauma, it caused anger.”
Only Councilwoman Kshama Sawant held firm to her pledge, casting the lone dissenting vote. An economist who has served on the Seattle City Council since 2014, Sawant said she was disappointed with her fellow council members. Sawant is also a member of the Socialist Alternative party.
“After months of declaring that Black Lives Matter, every single Democratic City Councilmember voted against the Peoples Budget & my office’s proposal to develop legislation to establish an elected community oversight board with full powers over police, including hiring & firing,” Sawant tweeted.
In a second tweet, Sawant said, “In city after city, Democrats have betrayed promises made during the height of #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd. Demonstrating yet again that our movements, and movement leadership, need to be independent of the political establishment. And that we need a new party for the working class.”
Others on Twitter backed Sawant up. One tweeted, “It’s disappointing and not surprising that your colleagues are not up to the task of defunding the police. Thanks for backing up Black Lives Matter with real policy.”
Another tweeted, “This is why we absolutely have to fight to keep socialists like Kshama in office. She’s accountable to us, not big business, which is why there’s this huge corporate recall attack being mounted against her. She only takes donations from working people.”
The Seattle mayor’s office also failed to make any significant cuts to the police department.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan recently vetoed a series of bills calling for immediate cuts to the department, including trimming senior staff salaries, up to 100 jobs and the homeless Navigation Team, King 5 reported.
The cuts were just a fraction of the 50 percent “defunding” that many activists had pushed.
Durkan promised to unveil a plan that will include details about her promised citywide $100 million investments in Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities and organizations.
Attrition rates, however, are exceeding expectations within the Seattle Police Department. According to the mayor’s office, 134 officers have left the department as of the end of October.
Following this news, City Council Budget Committee Chairperson Teresa Mosqueda led a last-minute amendment to reduce SPD’s budget by an additional $2 million. The amendment was approved.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.
Amid nationwide protests and calls to defund the police, the Philadelphia City Council in June cut $33 million in funding from the city’s Police Department — about 4.3 percent of the city’s proposed 2021 cops budget.
Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for eight minutes while he said repeatedly, “I can’t breathe.” The death set off months of protests, triggered a resurgence of the defund the police movement.
On June 17, Seattle’s King County Labor Council expelled the Seattle Police Officers Guild — the city’s police union — citing unaddressed racism in the police force’s ranks.
Over the past 50 years, police unions have become one of the most powerful lobbyists in local government and the loudest voices against criminal justice reform — especially when it comes to police use of force and discipline.
