After 8th fatal shooting, renewed calls to cut police funds
In the wake of the eighth fatal shooting by San Antonio police this year, activists renewed calls Wednesday to cut the city’s police spending ahead of a City Council vote that will likely boost that budget instead.
More than a dozen residents implored council members to vote to cut the San Antonio Police Department budget during a public videoconference meeting held the day after police shot and killed Darrell Zemault Sr., a Black man, while arresting him on two family violence warrants. Among those who spoke was Celeste Brown, an organizer with Defund Police SA and a friend of Zemault’s family. She called Zemault a “second father.”
“He didn’t have to die,” Brown said. “But the city of San Antonio, by way of SAPD, let him. So I urge all of you to take a hard look at yourselves and ask if this is the compassionate San Antonio that you say it is.”
“Defund the police that killed
Darrell Zemault Sr. and wash the blood off of your hands,” Brown said.
Council members are set to vote today on the city’s $2.9 billion spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year, which includes an $8 million increase in police spending.
Activists and residents pushed city leaders to spend less on police and more on social services during summer protests over the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis.
They were irate when City Manager Erik Walsh revealed the budget included an $8 million increase in police spending — bringing the department’s annual budget to $487 million.
That increase stems mostly from more than $13 million in increases in pay and health care required by the police union contract, which mandates a majority of the city’s police spending.
Walsh has pointed out his proposed budget invests more in health care, housing and education than in previous years — though that hasn’t satisfied activists.
Further upsetting activists is the approach Walsh and Mayor Ron Nirenberg have advocated in re-evaluating police spending. Instead of immediately making sweeping cuts to the police budget, Walsh proposed a monthslong process to assess police accountability and discipline and to figure out what residents want from the department.
Walsh plans to bring a reform package before City Council in
April.
But activists on Wednesday decried a seeming lack of urgency on council to address potential police reforms.
“I just really do not understand how any City Council member in the city of San Antonio can digest the news and not feel the same as we all do,” Karen Muñoz said.
But Nirenberg took issue with a line of argument among activists that the city should cut some of the $100 million in spending that doesn’t fall under the contract, which pays for costs like the city’s 911 communications center, fuel and police records.
“Because of the nature of these jobs and services, it’s not as easy as it might seem to immediately reallocate or take an axe to this portion of the budget,” Nirenberg tweeted.
Hours earlier, District 6 Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda, who chairs the council Public Safety committee, lamented that the proposed budget didn’t really deal with issues of policing.
“I still don’t think that we did enough, that we’re doing enough to look at police funding and police reform,” Havrda said during a separate hearing Wednesday afternoon.
“I just really do not understand how any City Council member ... can digest the news and not feel the same as we all do.”
Activist Karen Muñoz