First Step
Just a few days before the anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge where John Lewis and hundreds of others were beaten by Alabama State troopers as they demanded voting rights, Mayor Mike Duggan announced his budget proposals to the Detroit City Council. Nearly sixty years have passed since that vivid explosion of police violence, but it seems Mayor Duggan has learned nothing from it.
Instead, his budget requests follow the long line of Democrats and Republicans who have traded in the basic quality of life of the majority of African Americans for the racist idea that our neighborhoods require a heavily armed police force, backed by ever expanding instruments of surveillance.
In her thoughtful article about the possibility of reimaging safe, productive communities without police, Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor gives us a clear picture of the way city budgets have been distorted by the kind of thinking behind Duggan’s recent projections. Spending on police is becoming the main priority in cities. She explains:
From 1977 to 2017, state and local spending on police increased from forty-two billion dollars to a hundred and fifteen billion dollars, adjusted for inflation. This skyrocketing increase continued even after crime rates began to fall in the early nineties. Today, the Center for Popular Democracy found, Chicago, Oakland, Houston, Minneapolis, Orlando, and Detroit each spend at least thirty per cent of their general, or discretionary, fund on their police departments. Police-spending figures do not include the hundreds of millions of dollars paid by municipalities across the country to settle lawsuits connected to police violence. ABC News reported that, in the last year alone, lawsuits against police cost the public more than three hundred million dollars.
There is no question that Detroit faces several challenges this budget year. All our revenue sources are down. Layoffs and cuts are widespread, coming on the heels of a similar situation for last year. In spite of all of these concerns, Duggan and his chief of Police James Craig are calling for an increase of $41 million for the Police Department. This includes a pay raise for police, while over 1000 other city workers are still laid off.
The Detroit Police Department is the second largest budget item in our general fund, coming in just behind Development and Management. It dwarfs all other items except debt payments. For comparison, consider that police get about 33 % of the general fund. All city recreation and culture get a little over 2%.
Or consider that much of this money goes for police salaries. Today Detroit has more than twice the number of police officers per 10,000 residents than the national average. Or consider that of the $329 million total budget, less than $200,000 is spent on violence prevention.
People are coming to terms with the fact that police departments were never designed to keep us safe. Thanks to the Movement 4 Black Lives, more and more people recognize that police are instruments of control. They have their origins in the most violent efforts to enforce the enslavement of Africans and the murder of indigenous people.
As more and more people face these realities, calls for abolition of police are growing. Already 50 of the largest U.S. cities have reduced budgets by more than 5% this year. None of these moves has been easy, none without controversy. But they represent the growing understanding that more police do not make us safe.
Mayor Duggan and Chief Craig are locked into the past. We can imagine a future without police. It is time to make the choices that will bring that future to life. John Lewis taught us the only way to get to the other side is by taking the first step.