July 08, 2020 04:49 PM
www.washingtonexaminer.com/
The Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., asked the city
council to reconsider its plans to pull millions of dollars in funding
from the capital region’s police department.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department, murders are up 19% this year over last year — with 93 people killed as of Wednesday, compared to 78 over the same period in 2019.
In a letter sent Tuesday, Mayor Muriel Bowser petitioned Council Chairman Phil Mendelson to rethink slashing the department’s budget.
“This reduction would result in a level of sworn officers that has not been seen in D.C. since the 1990s, with seemingly no analysis on the impact this cut would have on the deployment of officers, officer response times to calls for service, and on community and neighborhood safety,” Bowser wrote. “Fewer officers would protect a district population that has increased by more than 17 percent, and where calls for police service have increased by 21 percent in the last decade alone. These reductions will be felt across all eight wards.”
Democratic politicians have called in the past month for police departments to be defunded after George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, died in May while a police officer knelt on his neck. The D.C. Council proposed cutting police funding by $15 million, including $6 billion to $7 billion that is due to a shortfall in funding because of the coronavirus.
In a preliminary budget vote Tuesday, the Democratic-majority council approved the budget, angering Bowser.
“It appears to me to be a shell game, them moving dollars around from this to that, and we’re going to have to dig into it,” Bowser said in a press conference Wednesday. “They made the district less safe.”
Washington has spent $600 million responding to the health pandemic and has been forced to cut $1.5 billion from its fiscal 2020 and 2021 budgets to make up for the added costs and loss of revenue.
The vote on the budget is expected in late July, and Bowser must approve it.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department, murders are up 19% this year over last year — with 93 people killed as of Wednesday, compared to 78 over the same period in 2019.
In a letter sent Tuesday, Mayor Muriel Bowser petitioned Council Chairman Phil Mendelson to rethink slashing the department’s budget.
“This reduction would result in a level of sworn officers that has not been seen in D.C. since the 1990s, with seemingly no analysis on the impact this cut would have on the deployment of officers, officer response times to calls for service, and on community and neighborhood safety,” Bowser wrote. “Fewer officers would protect a district population that has increased by more than 17 percent, and where calls for police service have increased by 21 percent in the last decade alone. These reductions will be felt across all eight wards.”
Democratic politicians have called in the past month for police departments to be defunded after George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, died in May while a police officer knelt on his neck. The D.C. Council proposed cutting police funding by $15 million, including $6 billion to $7 billion that is due to a shortfall in funding because of the coronavirus.
In a preliminary budget vote Tuesday, the Democratic-majority council approved the budget, angering Bowser.
“It appears to me to be a shell game, them moving dollars around from this to that, and we’re going to have to dig into it,” Bowser said in a press conference Wednesday. “They made the district less safe.”
Washington has spent $600 million responding to the health pandemic and has been forced to cut $1.5 billion from its fiscal 2020 and 2021 budgets to make up for the added costs and loss of revenue.
The vote on the budget is expected in late July, and Bowser must approve it.
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