Seattle’s city council unanimously approved a resolution on Tuesday to end any commitments to defund the police.
After the death of George Floyd in 2020, the slogan and movement to “Defund the Police” swept the country. Yet in the wake of a reported rise in crime in multiple cities across the country, politicians, even in Democratic Party strongholds, have sought to distance themselves from the idea.
Last week, Rob Saka spoke with fellow members of Seattle City Council’s public safety committee about his recently introduced Resolution 32167, to recognize work to improve public safety.
The councilmember said at the time, “This resolution reverses any prior commitment or pledge by past councils to defund or abolish the police. We know that these statements were routinely cited by departing police personnel as a reason for leaving. We also know that they are very divisive.”
He made headlines again at the city council meeting this week.
“‘Defund’ is dead if this passes, that’s the headline!” Saka said at Tuesday’s meeting shortly before the final vote where the bill was passed unanimously by the city council.
Local news outlet, the Everett Post, reported that next, “Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison will submit the last remaining Seattle Police Department policies to a federal monitor for review.”
“This legislation allows us to collectively heal from the shameful legacy of ‘Defund’ and, importantly, officially pivot towards a diversified response model that communities so desperately need,” Saka added in his speech before the vote.
Saka recalled the irony of how the council that voiced support for the “Defund the Police” movement in 2020 had no Black members at the time.
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“Ironically, at the time those ‘Defund’ commitments and pledges were made in the city of Seattle, there were zero, zero Black or African-American, African-descent councilmembers serving in the council at the time,” he said mocking the idea that such commitments were made in the best interests of Black Americans like himself.
“I didn’t benefit from that,” he said. “No communities that I’m involved with benefited from that. It hurt all communities!”
He reiterated his point and declared, “As a Black man, I’ll say, look, Black and Brown communities, we don’t need White saviors.”
After saying that the Black community is both capable of speaking for itself and not a monolith, Saka argued that the commitment to the “Defund the Police” movement had been made after “people cherry-picked specific voices and specific perspectives from our Black community here in Seattle and held it up as ‘the perspective.’”
“It’s not,” he said. “Wasn’t then, it’s not true now.”
