Activists call to cut Boston police budget by 10%
Activists are ramping up pressure on Boston city officials to redirect millions of dollars from the police budget toward services for communities of color — with a new petition calling for at least a 10% cut in the force’s funds.
Several activist groups are calling on Mayor Martin Walsh and the City Council to take $40 million from the $60 million police overtime budget — long a source of contention — and reallocate it toward services such as coronavirus relief, public health, housing, education and youth jobs.
The petition — led by the Muslim Justice League, Families for Justice as Healing and the Youth Justice & Power Union — also calls to decrease the police budget each year and increase community control over the department’s funding.
The petition puts a dollar amount to cries to “defund the police” that have risen from recent protests following the death of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police. For many, that means reducing funding to the cops in favor of other services, but for some that means abolishing departments.
“We do not need to hire more officers, shift their funding towards training, or have them engage in additional ‘community policing,’ “ Fatema Ahmad, executive director of the Muslim Justice League, said in a statement. “Community policing is policing. Policing doesn’t fix racism. It maintains it.”
Activists delivered that message to the City Council in a more than four-hour budget hearing Tuesday, in which community members also called for Boston Public Schools to rethink its ties to the cops. At $414 million, the police department has the second-largest budget in the city behind the schools.
“We know the ways that we’ve been funding safety and public safety have not led to the safest outcomes for communities,” Councilor Michelle Wu said. “We know that the ways we’ve been thinking of approaching criminal justice have not resulted in just outcomes.”
The mayor has said he would look to “reallocate some” money in the police budget but did not expand on his plans Monday when asked by the Herald. He canceled a Tuesday press conference in deference to Floyd’s funeral.
Councilor Andrea Campbell said Walsh’s comments are “a step in the right direction,” during a WGBH interview, calling this “an opportunity in which we can dismantle systems and make sure that they’re truly just.”
President Trump and his Republican allies have seized on activists’ calls to “defund the police” as a new weapon against Democrats nationally and locally.
“Radical leftists have no interest in working with police to enact reforms,” Massachusetts GOP Chairman Jim Lyons said in a statement this week. “Their goal is to abolish police departments wholesale.”
Top Democrats have been grappling with how to respond to activists’ demands without alienating moderates, with presumptive nominee Joe Biden telling “CBS Evening News” on Monday, “I don’t support defunding the police.”
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3dVnC3O
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