Seattle City Council Slashes Police Budget

Posted By TheNewsCommenter: From Freebeacon.com: “Seattle City Council Slashes Police Budget - Washington Free Beacon”. Below is an excerpt from the article.

The Seattle City Council on Monday approved a massive budget cut to the city's police department, which Mayor Jenny Durkan (D.) indicated she would sign next week.

As part of the 2021 fiscal year's budget, the council slashed the Seattle Police Department's funding by 18 percent. As a result, Seattle police will no longer have the authority to respond to 911 emergency calls and enforce parking violations. Overtime and training programs will be cut, and dozens of empty positions will go unfilled.

Durkan and the city council have sparred over department budget cuts since anti-police protests broke out in late May. On Monday, however, the mayor applauded the council for taking a "more deliberate and measured approach" to the police budget than it did earlier this summer. At one point, seven of the council's nine members pledged to slash police funding by 50 percent.

The Seattle Police Officers Guild said the move would lead to higher crime and homicide rates, which have already been on the rise this year.

"You're going to see crime rise," guild president Mike Solan told Seattle's King 5 news. "We're already seeing increased homicide rates that we haven't seen in decades. You're going to see longer, if not hardly any, follow-up investigations relative to … a 911 call for help."

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