To many, calls to defund the police may have seem radical before yesterday. But when you realize how much we spend on the police for the service we get, the only conclusion is that any increase in police spending is about our leaders' lack of imagination. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/opinion/george-floyd-police-funding.html?smid=tw-share

The impunity with which police officers have operated not only costs us our social fabric, but there is also a real, material, cost as well. For example, from 2013 to 2017, Cleveland residents paid $19mil to settle police misconduct cases. https://twitter.com/twkovach/status/1267159115794710531?s=20

And that cost is also by design. In the Mayor's 2020 budget estimate, Cleveland will spend 56.26% of its budget on "public safety."

Of that public safety budget, over 60% will go towards policing in Cleveland (including Corrections, the Police Review Board, and etc.).

What does that mean on the ground? It means that we spend over 20x on policing in Cleveland than we do on public health, including mental health services.

Police Budget: $217,908,375
Public Health Budget: $10,506,486

It means that Cleveland will spend over 14x more for policing than it will for vital recreation activities for its youth, or 12x more than it will for parks and trees in the city.

"The solution to ending police violence and cultivating a safer country lies in reducing the power of the police and their contact with the public."

Imagine all the things we could do to make our city safer if we reduced the police's $200 mil/yr budget and spent it elsewhere.