Seattle homicides highest in over a decade as council cuts police budget
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Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan plans to sign a new city budget that will reduce the police budget by 18% despite homicides reaching record highs not seen in a decade.
Council members overwhelmingly voted last week to cut funds for police training, overtime and to eliminate dozens of vacant positions within the Seattle Police Department after months of contentious talks. The reductions fall short of the 50% local activists demanded amid nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice.
The council also decided to transfer parking enforcement officers, mental-health workers and 911 dispatchers out of the police department.
“I believe we are laying the groundwork to make systemic and lasting changes to policing," Durkan said in a statement last week. "We have rightly put forward a plan that seeks to ensure SPD has enough officers to meet 911 response and investigative needs throughout the city, while acknowledging and addressing the disproportionate impacts policing has had on communities of color, particularly Black communities.
"I applaud the City Council for taking a more deliberate and measured approach to the 2021 Seattle Police Department budget than occurred this summer which led to the resignation of former SPD Chief Carmen Best," Durkan said in a written statement issued by her office."
The budget also directs the city to invest up to $100 million for projects in communities of color and the hiring of 100 police recruits next year.
Durkan's office did not immediately respond to a Fox News request for comment.
The new budget comes as the city marked its fifty-fifth murder of the year Monday with the fatal shooting of a man in the North Beacon Hill neighborhood. Another man was also shot in the same incident but survived.
Like other big cities, Seattle is seeing a... (Read more)
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