Portland among US cities looking to ‘refund’ police
PORTLAND, ORE. >> Night after night, hundreds of people marched the streets of Oregon’s largest city, demanding racial justice following the murder of George Floyd by a white officer.
Among the rallying cries were “defund the police” — a call for elected officials to reallocate some law enforcement funding elsewhere. In June 2020, Portland City Council and the mayor answered by cutting millions from the police budget.
Now, a year and a half later, officials are poised to partially restore those cuts. Portland City Council is considering around $5.2 million in police investments — adding to the approximately $230 million budget — amid a record number of homicides, the city’s greatest police staffing shortage in decades and reform recommendations made by the U.S. Department of Justice. A Wednesday afternoon vote is scheduled.
“Many Portlanders no longer feel safe,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said. “And it is our duty, as leaders of this city, to take action and deliver better results within our crisis response system.”
Portland isn’t the only liberal city doing an aboutface on police spending. From New York City to Los Angeles — in cities that had some of the largest Black Lives Matter protests, and some with extensive history of police brutality — police departments are seeing their finances partially restored in response to rising homicides, an officer exodus and political pressures.
In recent mayoral elections, some winning candidates have pledged to bolster public safety budgets. In Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, voters rejected
a proposal to replace the police department with a new Department of Public Safety.
Although the three-word call to action was the jumping-off point for communities to talk about how they want to be policed, experts say the goals of “defund the police” are debatable. To some it means abolishing police departments, for others it is about cutting law enforcement budgets and to others it is about reform and accountability.
“The defund-the-police movement spearheaded an opportunity for historically disenfranchised and historically under-resourced communities to express their continued discontent with policing,” said Howard Henderson, the Center for Justice Research director at Texas Southern University.
For months, beginning in late May 2020, Portland — one of the whitest cities in America — was roiled by near-nightly Black Lives Matter protests. At the time, officials including Wheeler were criticized for what many described as an overly aggressive police force.
During the height of protests officers reported more than 6,000 uses of force. The Department of Justice
rebuked the bureau for its “abnormally high” reliance on violent tactics.
Portland police have a history of being combative. In 2014, the city and Department of Justice reached a settlement agreement following a federal investigation that found Portland officers used excessive force against people with mental illness. Some of Wheeler’s proposals on the table — including $2.7 million for body-worn cameras and hiring staff to assess the police department’s crowd control tactics — are in order to meet the Justice Department’s reform requirements.
During last year’s protests, Portlanders called for $50 million to be cut from the department budget, with the money going to community-driven initiatives.
The City Council responded by cutting $15 million. An additional $12 million was cut due to pandemic-caused economic shortfalls. As a result, school resource officers, transit police and a gun violence reduction team — which was found to disproportionately target Black Portland residents during traffic stops, according to an audit in March 2018 — were disbanded.