PRESS RELEASE: Stop Police Terror Project DC Demands Better Than A $15 Million Cut To MPD Budget

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 25, 2020

Media Contacts:
Valerie Wexler, (703) 380-5997
Sean Blackmon, (850) 982-8176
info@sptdc.com 

Stop Police Terror Project DC Demands Better Than A $15 Million Cut To MPD Budget

Don’t be fooled: A $15 million cut is still a $3 million increase to the DC Metropolitan Police Department’s half a billion budget

WASHINGTON, DC — Ahead of today’s DC Council budget markup in the Judiciary & Public Safety Committee, the committee’s chair Charles Allen touted a $15 million dollar budget cut for the DC Metropolitan Police Department. Let us be clear—this is still a $3 million increase to the MPD, which has spent the last four weeks brutalizing protesters and decades brutalizing Black DC residents. 

“What kind of real shift is this when MPD still has more than $559 million in addition to the Mayor’s proposed increase?” said Natacia Knapper, organizer for Stop Police Terror Project DC. “If you do the math, no matter how you look at it, MPD is getting more of our money added to their budget. This is not what more than 20,000 DC residents meant when they testified to the Council telling them to defund MPD.”

This proposal comes this week against the backdrop of MPD continuing to terrorize, pepper spray and attacking protesters downtown. Charles Allen, and others on the Council, will tell the community that a $3 million increase is all that they could cut and the best they can do. 

We know that is a lie. 

Every time Mayor Muriel Bowser tries to increase the police budget, we hear about how dense and complicated the budget is and how it is impossible to do anything beyond small, incremental changes. We hear the Council say that they don't have the authority to circumnavigate the restrictions put in place by the police union’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. 

We know that is a lie, too.

During the course of the budget season, we heard many people—including councilmembers—say that the budget is a moral document, a quote that is often attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We’d like to share another of Dr. King’s quotes, one that talks about a very specific type of person, “Who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” 

On Monday, June 15 (thanks to extreme pressure from DC residents), Charles Allen held a virtual live hearing where nearly 90 people shared their expertise and lived experiences—many of them extremely traumatic—with police in DC. They also shared their overwhelming anger, rage from years of being ignored and condescended to by elected officials supposedly meant to serve them. The testimonies were powerful and brave, yet again they were met with indifference.  

Yet at no point did any councilmembers ask any questions (and it should be noted that Ward 7 Councilmember Vince Gray, who is on this committee, didn’t bother to show up at all). There were no questions on specifics regarding what defunding could look like in practice, on how the Council could work with the community on re-envisioning safety, not even an acknowledgement that many people showed up there to either futilely prove their humanity or reopen past trauma. This was not a hearing, this was not engagement, this was a bone thrown in hopes we would go away.

So let’s be clear: It’s not that cutting the MPD budget is impossible, or that the Council was impossibly constrained even though it wanted to do so much more. Even with an array of experts in front of them, offering their time, the Council has shown they are utterly unwilling to go beyond “shallow understanding.” 

While the Council has much to be ashamed of and to answer for, we can’t forget the most indifferent politician of all, and DC’s greatest protector of the police—Mayor Muriel Bowser, who despite being sued by Black Lives Matter DC, Stop Police Terror Project DC, and the ACLU-DC, has enjoyed hiding behind the yellow-painted words of “Black Lives Matter” at 16th Street as if they are a shield. 

It’s important to know where power lies in DC and where collective pressure must be put. The Mayor has far more power to move money between agencies at any time throughout the year than even the Council. At every turn, the Mayor has chosen the side of the oppressor over the needs and the safety of the people. She does it with a smile on her face. She does it enthusiastically. 

Our oppressors are never going to choose to do the right thing because they have so much to gain by upholding the current power structures. They know so much more is possible and they are making the choice to be on the wrong side of history—and that choice must come with consequences. 

“We are no longer waiting for a ‘more convenient season’ to be free,” Knapper said. “No matter what happens, we are not coming out of this budget season feeling defeated because the pressure won’t end there. This is the fight of our lives—the fight FOR our lives—and we hope the DC Council and the Mayor knows we see them and that we are ready.”

###