SERIOUSLY? Defund the Police Is Back

In a stunning example of how the far left keeps putting American society in danger, Seattle, which is being run by woke Marxist-Communists, is continuing to defund the police even though it is already experiencing record rates of homicide and other crimes.

Surreptitious Approach to Ruin Public Safety

The “defund the police” push of the Democrat-dominated Seattle City Council over the past few years wreaked havoc on security in the city, causing a 26-year high in homicide numbers and a “mass exodus” of police officers.

Local voters reacted by voting to elect a Republican city attorney and a pro-police mayor. Even against that backdrop, however, the city council is still pushing to defund the police, but it is doing so surreptitiously, The Federalist reported.

Seattle is a Perfect Example

The report noted the defunding of police in Seattle is still going on even if Democrats “won’t admit it.” The Democrat Party at the federal level started to “pretend” it was never seeking to “defund the police.”

According to the Federalist, the Democrat-run Seattle City Council is engaged in a “sinister attempt to dismantle” the city’s police department, but without all the defund the police slogans.

That has become clear after the council adopted the city budget for 2023, which also features the hiring plan for the Seattle Police Department.

The budget layout shows the city council is actually defunding another 80 police jobs even as the department has already become “dangerously understaffed.”

The new city budget, which was adopted 6-3, allowed leftist council members to assert that they have defunded the police in full.

 

Defunding the Police by Cutting Officer Jobs ‘For Good’

The report pointed out Seattle police needed to hire 200 new officers.

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s budget proposal was conservatively pro-police; it offered to fund the hiring of 120 police officers in 2023, before advancing to fill the remaining 80 positions further down the road.

However, the progressive city council “had other plans,” with the far-left head of budget, Teresa Mosqueda and other leftist council members deciding to use the budget to further downsize the Seattle Police Department.

What Democrats did was approve the funding for hiring 120 police officers in 2023, but they “cut for good” the other 80 positions to be filled at a later stage.

Thus, far-left extremists dominating the Seattle City Council have practically “shrunk” the city’s police department permanently.

The surreptitious tactic that lefties in Seattle used in order to permanently “defund the police” were exposed by two city lawmakers who voted against the budget – Alex Pedersen and Sara Nelson.

Even though both of them are Democrats, Pederson and Nelson rejected the budget precisely because of how worried they are about public safety in the city where the police are getting downsized.

Another council member, Lisa Herbold, argued the council “fully funded” the police, with only some “very small reductions.” Later, she accused Nelson of “spreading misinformation.”

This article appeared in Mainstpress and has been published here with permission.

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