Seven of the nine members of the Seattle City Council said they support an advocate-made proposal to defund the city’s Police Department by 50% and to reallocate the funds to other areas of community need.
The proposal was laid out by Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now, advocacy coalitions that came about during the recent Black Lives Matter protests, according to the Seattle Times.
The plan includes a four-point proposal for defunding the police, including removing Seattle’s 911 dispatchers from police control, scaling up community-based solutions to public safety, funding a community-led process to “imagine life beyond policing,” and investing in affordable housing.
The advocates for the plan said in a presentation to the council this week that the Police Department’s 2021 budget should be cut by half from the $409 million it was given this year. And they said the department’s remaining 2020 budget should be cut by 50% this summer.
“The status quo is no longer acceptable,” City Council President Lorena Gonzalez said. “We have to take away the things that no longer and should have never belonged to law enforcement in the first place.”
Another council member, Andrew Lewis, took to Twitter to express his gratitude and support for the proposal.
2/ To be clear, I am 100% in favor of the @DecrimSeattle demands, including the goal of a 50% cut of SPD’s budget. I am committed to reinvesting that money in BIPOC led organizations, including many I have directly worked with like @ICHOOSE180 and Community Passageways.
— Andrew J. Lewis (@LewisforSeattle) July 10, 2020
“I am 100% in favor of the @DecrimSeattle demands, including the goal of a 50% cut of SPD’s budget,” Lewis said. “I am committed to reinvesting that money in BIPOC led organizations, including many I have directly worked with like @ICHOOSE180 and Community Passageways.”
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, who last month proposed a much smaller $20 million cut, has pushed back on the plan, telling council members to slow down. The Democratic mayor told Seattle’s KING 5 that slicing the police budget in half would basically eliminate police response for the rest of the year.
“I don’t believe there’s any community in Seattle that, as a whole, wants to abolish police services for the rest of 2020,” Durkan said.
The mayor was previously criticized for her lack of a response to a protest-led autonomous zone that took over part of the city following the unrest sparked by the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The zone, deemed a police-free area by protesters, was dismantled at the order of Durkan at the start of the month after two teenagers were killed.
Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best said she hopes council members will take public opinion into consideration for their budget proposal.
“I think it’s rash and irrational to make that decision without having a thoughtful conversation with community members,” Best told Seattle’s KIRO 7. “And I’m hoping that the City Council will rethink the plan to do that — without having a plan for how we’re going to reenvision policing and how it will work.”
Other cities, including Minneapolis, have taken steps to defunding or dismantling their police departments in recent weeks.
