This week, the Seatlle City Council proposed a motion to replace its police department with a “civilian led department of community safety & violence prevention.”
According to the Post Millennial, the proposal states that the council plans to “remove certain functions from the Seattle Police Department to and provide funding for a community-led process to inform the structure and function of a new department of community safety & violence prevention; requesting modifications to policing practices…”
The city council wants to replace the police department with “culturally-relevant expertise rooted in community connections, “housing, food security, and other basic needs,” and “trauma-informed, gender-affirming, anti-racist praxis.”
The reason behind the idea is so that the city council “recognizes that the nation’s and Seattle’s history of racism and the current impact of institutional racism cause over-policing and underinvestment in communities of color and especially in Black communities.” The council also said that it is “committed to confronting structural and institutional racism as a fundamental step towards addressing the racist institution of policing.”
Meanwhile, last week, the same city council voted to close the county jail and other juvenile detention centers.
What could possibly go wrong?
