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Garcetti won't support Black Lives Matter push to defund the LAPD

Daily News - 6/11/2020

Jun. 11--Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Wednesday said he does not support a proposal backed by Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and other groups that would defund the police department by far more than the $100 million to $150 million reduction now backed by some city leaders.

Hundreds of people have flooded City Council meetings in recent weeks calling for the city leaders to take up a proposal, billed the "People's Budget LA," that calls for reducing spending on the Los Angeles Police Department to 5.7% of the mayor's proposed budget for the upcoming year.

Garcetti has backed a proposal by some City Council members calling for a reduction of $100 million to $150 million to the proposed LAPD budget, which would essentially do away with a $120 million increase in spending in his current plan.

Meanwhile, Garcetti has been meeting with some community groups that propose cutting the Los Angeles Police Department by at least $250 million, but this coalition does not include groups like Black Lives Matter Los Angeles.

Representatives of Black Live Matter Los Angeles, one of the main organizers of the protests that continue around the city, have rallied around a call for the defunding or abolition of the LAPD. And demonstrators can be seen throughout such protests carrying signs that the police department to be defunded.

"I don't support that," Garcetti said of the People's Budget LA proposal, and the plan to almost entirely gut the LAPD's budget.

He added that he was "glad that that vision is out there and that people have the ability to put that forward."

The Police Department budget makes up 54% of unrestricted revenue in the proposal, a figure taken from the mayor's budget proposal that has been circulated by the People's Budget LA campaign. But Garcetti says that is not a fair reflection of the police department's share of city spending.

He says the LAPD's budget actually makes up about a third of the city budget.

Garcetti Wednesday he is listening to others as well, who have "written" to him to say they do not want any funding cut from the LAPD budget, although they support "racial justice."

"What is loud and clear," he said, "and I think where I agree with almost everybody who has written to me, or put something forward, is that we have under-invested in the communities that most need us."

Supporters of the defunding campaign support shifting spending from policing and law enforcement to programs aimed at providing aid to financially strapped Angelenos, improving health conditions and providing more affordable housing options.

They also propose putting 24% of the city budget into a category called "reimagined community safety," which could include family counseling, victims reparations, gang intervention and recovery and restorative justice programs that do no include involvement by the police.

Following the news that Minneapolis leaders were planning to disband their police department, other mayors and public officials have recently also come out against the outright defunding of police department budgets.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg told CapRadio on Monday that he did not "want to even think in those terms about disbanding the police department," but that he was more interested in reducing the types of 911 calls officers would need to respond to.

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