Council to explore 10% cut to police department funds
Move comes due to national push, tight city budget
Following a lengthy discussion over the role of police and the city’s fiscal challenges, Milwaukee Common Council members on Tuesday approved a measure directing the city budget office to explore the implications of a 10% cut to the police department budget.
The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked protests and calls across the nation to significantly rethink how public safety is carried out, including in Milwaukee.
Common Council members said they felt an urgency in this moment.
Ald. Ashanti Hamilton said the city can’t police its way into stable neighborhoods, so it’s necessary to evaluate how resources are being spent.
“We haven’t had the opportunity like we have this time where there is such a universal call for change in the way that we’re doing things — not just here in the city of Milwaukee but nationally,” Hamilton said, adding that there are issues specific to the city that justify the need to move in a different direction.
Ald. Milele Coggs said the legislation puts the council in a better position to get an earlier look at potential ways the city’s budget office believes such a reduction could happen.
At the same time, they are not limited to the 10% reduction being explored, she said, and she expects to see future legislation that speaks to fair allocations by department.
“This is a beginning of us being able to look at it before the budget cycle, so I would hope that those community members who have been demanding that we defund or divest from the police department recognize that this is just one step towards a direction of us beginning to prioritize even more the things that the community would like,” she said.
The Milwaukee Police Department budget, at $297.4 million this year, is nearly half of the city’s general fund departmental appropriations.
The legislation was approved on a 13-2 vote, with Alds. Scott Spiker and Mark Borkowski voting against it.
Ald. Michael Murphy, like other members of the council, said he had received hundreds of emails calling for defunding the Milwaukee Police Department.
Murphy, who chairs the council’s finance committee, said he’s listening to those concerns, but he also noted the potential implications of such a cut.
“I think it’s incumbent upon us as leaders and elected officials to make it very clear what the costs and consequences of a 10% cut would be to the Milwaukee Police Department, specifically how it would relate to public safety in addition to how those funds would be reallocated that might mitigate those concerns,” he said.
Murphy said he asked the city’s Legislative Reference Bureau to do a cursory analysis of the impact of such a reduction of the police department budget.
The analysis found that reducing the department’s personnel budget by $29.7 million could be accomplished by cutting 345 sworn positions.
The analysis says that would be an approximately 19% cut, from about 1,802 sworn positions budgeted in
2020, to 1,457.
Murphy said while he supports seeking more information, he would have “very serious reservations” about a cut that large.
And he anticipated that fiscal challenges facing the city would force cuts across departments, including the police department, unless some relief is provided by the federal government.
Murphy urged council members to ask residents who favor cutting the police budget to ask what responsibilities residents feel police should not have going forward.
“I think that’s critical,” he said. Several alders centered the discussion around the role the police should play in the community and what duties should be reassigned to others.
Hamilton questioned why the police are responsible for responding to tasks such as wellness checks, and Ald. Nikiya Dodd called for a more holistic approach in addressing societal health and safety by looking at organizations that work to address root problems such as poverty, mental health and racism.
“Right now, it’s about prevention and making sure that all members of our society are safe, and that they’re not just protected by our police, but also being cared for and looked at as a human being by our police department,” Dodd said.
Still, Spiker expressed concern that investing in long-term fixes rather than the police department would create a “gap in public safety that would not be met by an improvement in general wellbeing in time to make up for that loss.”
In related action, the Common Council unanimously approved a measure that urges the city’s Fire and Police Commission to adopt a policy for when people in police custody say they cannot breathe or it appears that they cannot breathe.
“The policy should include a requirement that police officers ask whether the person needs medical attention,” the resolution states.
Also, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm announced Tuesday his office would not prosecute peaceful protesters but had charged about 40 people for crimes that spun out of the early days of the continuing marches over the death of George Floyd.
The announcement seemed to address more than 160 tickets issued to people who were out past the 9 p.m. curfew that was in place from May 31 to June 1. City Attorney Tearman Spencer said Friday his office would be reviewing them all and dismissing some, short of a general amnesty demanded by the ACLU Wisconsin and several defense attorneys.
Most of the $691 citations were issued by the Milwaukee Police Department and would be handled in Municipal Court. Chisholm said his office would “closely scrutinize” any curfew citations written by the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office, but as of Tuesday, it had not been asked by the sheriff ’s office to review any curfew tickets.
Bruce Vielmetti of the Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.
Contact Alison Dirr at 414-224-2383 or adirr@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter @AlisonDirr.