Last week, we reported that the Seattle City Council proposed a measure to replace its police department with a “civilian led department of community safety & violence prevention.”
Now, it seems to be making good on that proposal, with a unanimous vote in support of police budget proposals that would lay off 100 officers, even while the city’s mayor and police chief opposed it, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The Free Beacon reports that the city council started looking at the police department’s budget earlier this summer amid anti-police riots. The most recent set of proposals, criticized by the mayor and police chief, would also end the removal of homeless people from the city’s streets and cut police leadership salaries.
Mayor Jenny Durkan said that “[W]e don’t want to lay off our newest recruits and newer officers…. They are our most diverse class ever, and they are so committed to reform and community policing. The youngest officers would be the first to go. Those 100 cuts the council wants to do this year would gut this new class and those new recruits.”
Police Chief Carmen Best said that “[T]he push from council and some of our community is to do these large scale changes in 2020 with no practical plan for community safety, and I believe wholeheartedly that that is completely reckless. That is something that will invariably happen—there will be a gap in services.”
These councilmembers were elected to serve the people, and one of government’s vital roles is to keep its people safe. Sad that all they seem to always put their own ideology above all else.
