The Seattle City Council voted on Monday to reduce the city’s police department budget as officers leave the force in droves.
City council members voted 8-1 to reduce the department’s budget by 18 percent, according to KOMO News. The council’s decision will impact certain positions on the force that will be unfilled and relocate 911 dispatchers and parking enforcement outside of the Seattle Police Department’s jurisdiction.
Amid violent, nationwide uprisings and protests against police officers, Democrat Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office stated that 134 officers have left the city’s police force as of October 31. Last month alone, 23 officers left their positions at the department.
Durkin also expressed her excitement over the council’s decision to cut the department’s budget.
“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.”
The Daily Wire noted that the decision was also praised by Nikkita Oliver, “a radical Black Lives Matter activist who played a leadership role in city’s short-lived Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (or CHAZ) last summer.”
“These are all really exciting things that have been won after many, many years of mobilizing and partnering together,” Oliver said. “They’ve been won because of the uprising and defense of Black lives, and the many people who put their feet to the ground, who have made calls, sent emails, and organized their communities.”
After the city’s police department suffered a budget cut by the millions and far-left activists targeted her home, KOMO News reported in early August that Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best would retire from the Seattle Police Department. Her retirement was effective September 2.
“You truly are the best police department in the country, and please trust me when I say, the vast majority of people in Seattle support you and appreciate you,” Best said in an email announcing her retirement.
Seattle has witnessed an increase in demonstrations across the city from the Black Lives Matter movement activists, some of whom took part in a storming of a Seattle neighborhood where they harassed residents and demanded that they “get the f*** out” and “give black people back their homes” as reparations.
In late July, 45 people were arrested in a Seattle riot after explosives were thrown at officers.
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