Infuriated Seattle residents thronged to the phones on Wednesday to blast the city council’s plans to slash police funding by as much as 50%. The council is scheduled to vote on the issue within the next two weeks.
“The Seattle City Council heard from hundreds during Wednesday’s budget meeting as members get closer to a vote on whether to defund the police department by 50 percent, a decision that could lead to the firing of hundreds of officers … One day after launching a ‘Stop Defunding’ petition, the Seattle Police Officers Guild said they already collected more than 20,000 signatures,” Q13 Fox reported.
The “Stop Defunding” petition states: “On Monday, August 3rd 2020, despite having no specific plan, the Seattle City Council will vote to defund the Seattle Police Department. The defunding of the SPD would mean that up to 800 officers would be fired. That’s over half of all sworn officers. It would also mean immensely longer 911 response times and of course, higher crime rates. Please sign our petition to stop the defunding of the Seattle Police Department and send a message to the city council that says ‘no’ to the defunding the Seattle Police Department.”
Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) President Mike Solan said 100 officers would be off the force if the cuts are approved.
One caller asserted, “SPD is already understaffed and with the city growing rapidly, calls for service are increasing. I do not want less officers, I want more officers who are able to respond to priority calls in seven minutes or less. We don’t live in Utopia.”
Another added, “Seattle City Council, you are irresponsibly not fully representing your constituents by making the reckless decision of defunding our police department by 50 percent.”
On Thursday, after a city council meeting, Solan said, “What’s quite clear [is] that there is an activist class that is deeply entrenched in the political public safety conversations here, and they bombarded the public comment line. It was close to 300 people.”
“In 36 hours, we have over 20,000 signatures that are being used to push against this defunding nonsense and tell the Seattle City Council ‘no’ on their defunding, naive, dangerous proposal of removing 50% of our budget,” Solan said of the petition, as reported by KIRO. “We may possibly release this to the city council to show them, hey, we’re not being controlled by the unreasonable activists that you’re governing to, and I call it governing by Twitter.”
“This is the majority, the ignored majority I talked to and referred to,” he added. “The reasonable majority of Seattle citizens and residents across this region that are showing support for law enforcement, saying no, no more, no more of your unreasonable activism.”
According to Democratic Mayor Jenny Durkan, Seattle’s crime soared 525% because of the violence arising from the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone.
Reporting on Durkan’s emergency order removing protesters from the “occupied zone” known as CHOP, the New York Post notes that Durkan cited a spike in “narcotics use and violent crime, including rape, robbery, assault, and increased gang activity” within the radical leftist-occupied area and at least “22 additional incidents, in person-related crime in the area, to include two additional homicides, 6 additional robberies, and 16 additional aggravated assaults (to include 2 additional non-fatal shootings).”