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Mayor Durkan denounces council plan to cut SPD budget
KUOW RadioWhat specifically are you opposed to in the [Seattle City Council budget] amendments [regarding the police budget] that are being discussed today?
Obviously, the really easy political thing would have been for me and [Seattle Police] Chief [Carmen] Best to say, yep, we could cut the police department by 50% and we'd be fine -- because there was such political pressure coming from some quarters of the city to do that. You saw 7 of the 9 city council members jump on that bandwagon right away.
But we said number one, we thought it would be irresponsible to do it because there was no plan involved and in addition, to have that kind of drastic reduction in the context of just the five months that's left of 2020, is not the way to go about reimagining, reconfiguring a police department.
And some of the cuts can't be made because of either labor contracts we have with a range of labor unions, or because of the administration of certain things like the 911 center that requires federal certifications. So the bottom line is it's complex.
I am heartened that the city council now recognizes that. And the cuts that they are proposing are the exact cut that we proposed after a very thorough process where Chief Best looked at it and made recommendations on what could be cut, what could be moved, and we'd still preserve what we needed for public safety. The one thing they're doing on top of that is to lay off 100 officers between now and the end of the year, and we will lose our most diverse and our most recent hires that are the exact kind of lifeblood we want in the police department. And I believe and Chief Best believes that that is the wrong way to go.
Obviously, the really easy political thing would have been for me and [Seattle Police] Chief [Carmen] Best to say, yep, we could cut the police department by 50% and we'd be fine -- because there was such political pressure coming from some quarters of the city to do that. You saw 7 of the 9 city council members jump on that bandwagon right away.
But we said number one, we thought it would be irresponsible to do it because there was no plan involved and in addition, to have that kind of drastic reduction in the context of just the five months that's left of 2020, is not the way to go about reimagining, reconfiguring a police department.
And some of the cuts can't be made because of either labor contracts we have with a range of labor unions, or because of the administration of certain things like the 911 center that requires federal certifications. So the bottom line is it's complex.
I am heartened that the city council now recognizes that. And the cuts that they are proposing are the exact cut that we proposed after a very thorough process where Chief Best looked at it and made recommendations on what could be cut, what could be moved, and we'd still preserve what we needed for public safety. The one thing they're doing on top of that is to lay off 100 officers between now and the end of the year, and we will lose our most diverse and our most recent hires that are the exact kind of lifeblood we want in the police department. And I believe and Chief Best believes that that is the wrong way to go.
