City civilian oversight office needs the full $3M
In the debate over cops’ oversight, Phoenix politicians are fundamentally failing everyone – the men and women in blue and those clamoring to hold them accountable.
Long before this week’s social unrest that grew out of police brutality, the Phoenix City Council had already pitted the fight as “law and order” vs. the “cop haters” seeking a lawless society.
That kind of incendiary depiction is good only to score political points, and it throws fuel on an already explosive divide between police officers and the residents they’re hired to protect.
Phoenix’s failure this week to fully fund the Office of Accountability and Transparency to oversee police mis
conduct is shortsighted at best.
Councilman Sal DiCiccio, the selfproclaimed leader of the pack defending cops, fails to recognize that not funding oversight will hurt officers even more because it’ll make their jobs a lot more difficult in communities where they spend a lot of their time.
The civilian oversight office has investigate powers, something DiCiccio and critics decried as an assault on cops. This week, they succeeded in killing a proposal to add nearly $3 million to next year’s budget to investigate police misconduct. The proposed budget only has $400,000 for that purpose.
Phoenix’s refusal to approve the $3 million to fully fund the oversight championed by Councilman Carlos García came amid a backdrop of national unrest over the brutal killing of African American George Floyd by a white police officer.
Throngs have spilled onto Phoenix streets for days and on Wednesday they braved the scorching heat to demand council members fund police oversight.
“No justice, no peace,” they chanted outside City Hall.
That didn’t move the conservatives on the council. They say there isn’t enough money because the coronavirus pandemic has significantly cut into the city’s budget.
That’s baloney. That argument is nothing more than an excuse to protect cops from civilian oversight.
It’s about spending priorities. The city’s $1.3 billion proposed budget assumes a loss of $26 million in revenue due to COVID-19. The loss could be up to $128 million, city officials say.
The financial situation is dire, yes. Yet the city still is proposing giving police $745 million for fiscal year 20202021, up from this year’s $715 million.
Police oversight backers want the council to cut 25% from the police budget to fund the Office of Accountability and Transparency. That’s what some call “defunding the police.”
The council will give it another go on June 8.
But the conservative DiCiccio won’t consider anything. To him, cutting any penny from the police budget is caving to those he calls “cop-haters.”
Let’s get real here. Nothing will convince DiCiccio to fund any type of police oversight. The only hope is for his allies – all but one of which are white – to come to their senses. They are Jim Waring, Thelda Williams and Deb Stark.
Michael Nowakowski, the only Latino who voted with the white council members, could change it all. Not doing so is unconscionable, given that Nowakowski represents a predominantly Hispanic district.
Nowakowski is serving his last term in office and that might explain why he doesn’t care to hear the desperate cries of so many minorities demanding police accountability. Why turn his back on his own people when they need him most?
Roughly 42% of the city’s 1.6 million residents are Latino, who along with African Americans and Native Americans often experience excessive force and police shootings, as noted in The Arizona Republic’s extensive reporting.
Councilwoman Laura Pastor passionately expressed her frustration at her colleagues’ disregard for the city’s people of color.
“What’s happening now is wrong,’’ Pastor said about the failed efforts to fund the new police oversight. “This is my community.”
State Rep. Raquel Terán and more than 20 other lawmakers sent the council a letter urging funding for the civilian review board.
“Allocating only $400,000 for a