Despite Public Pressure, City Council Wouldn’t (and Couldn’t) Touch Police Budget
The system is rigged, but there is a way forward...
The impact of nationwide protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolic police was evident in Monday’s San Diego City Council hearing on next year’s budget.
Mayor’s Kevin Faulconer’s ask for a $27 million increase in the police department’s budget to pay for already negotiated pay raises and cover costs related to the COVID-19 epidemic turned what once might have been the usual suspects objecting into a nearly 12 hour marathon meeting.
This year’s budget proposal increased the city’s funding for police to 37% of its operating budget, nearly $600 million. Energized by recent activism against police brutality, large numbers of people mostly new to the budget process, demanded a $100 million cut in police funding, which would have brought the police funding down to 33% for this year’s austerity-influenced budget. Last year’s funding equaled 34% of the city budget.
People favoring a cut in funding sent more than 4000 emails to the council. The city’s dial in comment line crashed briefly as hundreds of calls from constituents were logged.
Former San Diego City Beat editor Seth Combs, stayed true to cause of keeping an eye on things at the council, tallying
453 - calls for the council to repurpose, reallocate or entirely reject @SDMayorsOffice’s increased police budget
8 - calls for the council to keep mayor’s police budget as is
13 -other (parks and rec, libraries, free WiFi, etc)
From the Union-Tribune’s coverage:
This budget does not reflect the values of San Diegans, and its enactment would have racist outcomes,” said Kimberly Kishon. “Public safety must include an investment in housing, health care, food, good jobs, education, free public transit and resources for small businesses and undocumented people.”
Nicklas Lee said a shift in priorities could reduce the need to spend money on police.
“Work to invest in communities by funding services that strengthen communities and end the need for police action from the front side of things,” Lee said. “The situation today is dire; don’t fuel the fire.”
Bernadette Vela said increasing the police budget would only make minorities in San Diego more vulnerable to police misconduct.
“As issues of police brutality and state violence against black communities and communities of color are highlighted, we need to talk about what real safety looks like,” she said. “Our communities have experienced devastating loss at the hands of racist police.”
In the end, the council voted 8-1 to stay with the increase. D3 Councilman Chris Ward, who’s running for Assembly this year, was the only no vote.
From Voice of San Diego:
The Council did seriously not contemplate that request (for a $100 million reduction). It did maintain core city services – areas like library hours, tree trimming and pothole filling – beyond what Mayor Kevin Faulconer proposed in his budget.
And while the Council did not explore a significant cut – or any cut, even – to SDPD’s budget, it did find funding for two new areas that Council members said could address concerns over systemic racism in the city.
Councilwoman Monica Montgomery championed the idea of an Office of Racial Equity, a new group in the city that could work among departments to address structural inequality. It would also control a $3 million fund that it could invest in communities or use to partner with nonprofit groups working in racial justice. The Council funded it with a small cut to expected contracts for outside firms next year.
And Council President Georgette Gomez put forward the idea for a new, $1.5 million outreach program to help homeless people not through law enforcement but through “compassionate care,” as Gomez said. It was funded through a cut to the city’s automobile needs.
There were a lot of angry activists in the wake of the vote. A car caravan paid a late night visit to the Mayor’s home on Point Loma. People were tweeting to vote councilmembers out of office who aren’t even running this year. Districts 1, 3, 5, 7, & 9 are the seats up for grabs this year, and none of them has an incumbent on the November ballot.
Welcome to San Diego, folks. Change is hard.
And here’s a dirty little secret: if the council had voted like people wanted last night, the mayor could undo it with a stroke of his pen. And the police unions could tie it up in court for years.
I was going to write an analysis of what happened and why, but then saw Democratic Party chair William Kennedy-Rodriguez’ twitter thread on the subject and realized an annotated version of what he had to say would be better.
He makes a lot of points about the process activists need to understand to win this battle. Trust me on this, he’s an ally...
I am feeling some kind of way about last night's vote where the San Diego Police Department got an increase in the budget, and so I get the anger that is building towards the CMs [Council Members] who voted Yes, but we have to have a real conversation of why that happened.
Let me start this by saying: 1) I am 100% in and support the movement for Black Lives. 2) We need to defund the police by repurposing their mandate. I’ll explain that later.
So what had happened was 8 SD council members including 2 solid progressives voted to increase the PD budget in spite of a wave of commentary by the people to reduce the PD budget. It’s really easy to be mad about that, I am, but it’s more complicated than that.
Why can’t we capitalize on the momentum that is clearly building to “defund the police?” It’s enraging but let me tell you the reason for it is systemic and is going to make you even madder and I feel is designed to confuse and divide us.
The system is so fixed against Black folx and other POCs in this city and country that it is difficult AF for our electeds to do anything about it quickly and that builds into an important point
That’s why the movement for Black lives is a marathon and not a sprint. It will take long, sustained, action to get things done. It’s also why we have results like this that turn us against the electeds we need to make that change. Classic divide and conquer.
The system was built to make it hard to dismantle and its literally built to exact a punishing price on anyone who tries here is one of the major reasons: Strong Mayor form of government
Because of the Strong Mayor form of government our mayor has a line item veto. What that means is the mayor can unilaterally defund certain line items and attribute it to others. That means the council can defund the police but the mayor and Pd still gets that money
And what’s worse is where that money comes from & how he can take it. So let’s say the council did vote to defund the police on a 5-4 vote and let’s say Ward, Moreno, Gomez, Montgomery, & Campbell vote to reduce the budget as we all want them to. Here is what happens:
What happens next is this: The Mayor can restore that $$ to PD UNILATERALLY by taking it out of the priorities of the CMs who voted against him. Office of Race and Equity - Dead. Library hours - Dead. Investment in Southeast SD - Dead. Staff support for CMs - Dead
Furthermore, the mayor can punitively direct the city’s departments to not be as responsive to the CMs for critical constituent services. He can render a CM near useless to their community and that could lead to them losing re-election. This is all b/c of Strong Mayor
Remember, the whole problem with policing is a symptom of a greater disease. The social and economic plight of the Black community specifically and other POC communities as well. Martin Luther King Jr told us that in 1963!!! It was true then, it is true now.
The Police role in upholding the status quo that keeps Black and other POC communities down is a symptom of that great disease, a disease which has existed since the founding of this nation. It is America’s greatest sin and it’s our job to change it.So just elaborate how bad it would be if they had voted down that budget the way I said. The communities who would literally pay for that $$ would be communities in D4, D8, and D9.
So right now those communities get needed investment. But if the vote went the other way the communities who suffer the most from underinvestment would be paying for the police $$ increase. It’s immoral that it puts our CMs in horrible position that hurts their communities
And we’ve seen this happen before! A few years ago the mayor wanted something, I think it was a convention center and the council voted not to put the $ into paying for the election. What did the mayor do? He took that $ out of the budgets of the CMs who voted against him
Now here is the other thing that makes yesterday’s vote damn near impossible: Meet and confer and before we villainize it, let’s remember it’s an important labor protection but PDs use it to protect their immoral budget.
Basically “Meet and Confer” prevents the city from doing things that affect the working conditions of employees w/o meeting with their unions and for 99% of the time that’s a very good thing that we should support to protect our city employees who are public servants.
Courts have ruled things illegal (even referendums by the people) if meet and confer is not done 1st. We know this b/c that is what ended pension reform (in that scenario it was a good thing with really bad budgetary consequences Sanders/Demaio really screwed the city)
So if that imaginary 5-4 council voted to defund the PD the mayor could take that money from their communities AND the POA can sue and cost the city millions upon millions more. That makes their decision 1000000 times harder
It also makes the votes of Montgomery & Gomez, brave. They know their communities would have paid for that police $ increase & they know they would have faced consequences either way. They likely decided this was the best choice given the consequences to their community
Back to the issue at hand, ok, so what do we do now? Frankly, I am f#%*!g livid w/ the status quo and how our Mayor & PD have treated the protesters and escalated things into violence and I am sick of a status quo that allows them to do it at the expense of Black lives
We can defund the police by repurposing their mandate (h/t to @MyersSD30) Police officers should not be enforcing homeless / poverty, social workers should be addressing those problems with resources
Police officers should not be in possession of military grade equipment, we need to defund that. Police officers should not be dealing with mental health calls, trained medical professionals should deal with that.
Police officers should not be over policing underrepresented and underprivileged communities. I bet there is some cost savings in ending that
Since they seem to be shooting people in the head with “non-lethal” weapons (which has the potential of being lethal) I bet curbing that would lead to some cost savings.
We defund the police by removing those “services” from them and putting it in the hands of people trained to do that safely and that should lead to funds being shifted away from the PD to the community and needed services.
That could not be accomplished last night because of Strong Mayor form of government and the courts ruling that meet and confer must be done first or whatever you do will be ruled illegal. And it placed good, progressive, CMs in an impossible situation
And I want to end this by saying the anger about this is valid, it’s necessary, and it’s righteous. We need to be angry to push reform and change but we also need to be aware that there is no quick answer to hundreds of years of injustice and oppression
The movement for Black lives is the civil rights movement of our time. Our fight for social, racial, and economic justice is long, it is hard but in the end we shall prevail.
So, if you’ve read this far, the question remains, what can be done?
First, the candidates for the five council seats (remember there are no incumbents in these races) on the November ballot, need to be asked to commit (or not) to the notion that police funding needs to be redirected in such a manner as to get law enforcement out of the social services business.
That’s a big part of what “defunding the police” really means, and it’s a shame the phrase is currently being weaponized against advocates.
The good news here is that public opinion is changing, and in a big way.
Consider the Washington Post poll published this morning:
Americans overwhelmingly support the nationwide protests that have taken place since the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, and they say police forces have not done enough to ensure that blacks are treated equally to whites, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.
President Trump receives negative marks for his handling of the protests, with 61 percent saying they disapprove and 35 percent saying they approve. Much of the opposition to Trump is vehement, as 47 percent of Americans say they strongly disapprove of the way the president has responded to the protests.
The poll highlights how attitudes about police treatment of black Americans are changing dramatically. More than 2 in 3 Americans (69 percent) say the killing of Floyd represents a broader problem within law enforcement, compared with fewer than 1 in 3 (29 percent) who say the Minneapolis killing is an isolated incident.
That finding marks a significant shift when compared with the reactions in 2014 to police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and New York. Six years ago, 43 percent described those deaths as indicative of broader problems in policing while 51 percent saw them as isolated incidents.
Secondly, the activities of local law enforcement unions need scrutiny. When contracts come up for renegotiation, the public needs to be informed of what’s at stake. Their campaign donations need to be a campaign issue going forward.
While negotiations are rightfully private, the issues covered --including current policy--should be available to the public. And demands can be made that government entities respect the interests of the general public when negotiations are in process.
Our Mayor, District Attorney, and the County Board of Supervisors are the ones who can make this happen. Our local media needs to make people aware of these processes as they come up on the horizon. (Does anybody know when these contracts expire?)
Finally, the protests, whether virtual, or in person need to continue. It’s taken 400+ years to get where we’re at and it makes sense to say things aren’t going to change overnight. But they will change as long as people are pushing.
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Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com