June 4, 2020; Los Angeles Times
Calls to defund the police have had some initial effect—at least in Los Angeles, where Mayor Eric Garcetti announced yesterday, in the process of vowing to reform the LAPD, that he was reducing other areas of the budget to reinvest $250 million in Black communities and communities of color, specifically to support jobs, education and healing. Later, Eileen Decker, the police commissioner, announced that $100–$150 million of that would come from reducing the budget of the police. (For more context on this move, please read today’s story from Emily Weyrauch.)
Garcetti says he is “committed to making this moment not just a moment.”
To place this in context, on Monday, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore compared “looters” to the officers involved in the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Two days after that, on Wednesday, L.A. City Council President Nury Martinez introduced a motion to cut the funding.
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Today we intrdcd a motion to cut funding to the LAPD, as we reset our priorities in the wake of the murder of #GeorgeFloyd & the #BlackLivesMatter call that we all support to end racism. This is just one small step. We cannot talk about change, we have to be about change. pic.twitter.com/hR1tBAqwHP
— Nury Martinez (@CD6Nury) June 3, 2020
Garcetti, who took a knee with protestors and a number of National Guard troops on Tuesday, also introduced a new Civil and Human Rights Commission that will contain an Office of Racial Equity to help the city “apply an equity lens to everything we do.”—Ruth McCambridge