Black Lives Matter protests have had great effect at holding police accountable, of having cops defunded and defanged. But not everyone is happy. Those who like the status quo of white racist cops defending the ruling class won’t let that happen without a fight.
I didn’t believe this story on the first site I read it, but if an establishment lapdog like Newsweek is willing to publish it, well….
Seattle Police Say Most Non-White Officers Will be Fired if City Cuts Budget
he Seattle Police Department (SPD) announced that many of their newly hired, non-white officers would be the first let go should the city continue with drastic, politically motivated talks of budget cuts.
Seattle Police told residents Friday that current City Council discussions about cutting the department’s budget by 50 percent would be “catastrophic for public safety.” Seattle Chief of Police Carmen Best warned activist groups and council members alike that the department’s “newest, most broadly diverse officers on patrol” would be the first employees they are “forced to terminate” under the proposed budget cuts. Best wrote a letter to Mayor Jenny Durkan Friday cautioning that at least 50 percent of BIPOC officers would be the first people fired.
Translation: “If we’re going to be held accountable for the racism of white cops, then we’re going to have a whites-only police force.”
The all-white old boys’ club of policing was the cause of the violence and corruption. How is eliminating diversity, eliminating newer and younger (and likely less corrupt) cops going to make the city safer for anyone except white people who lick boots?
Just remember not to call it racism. The layoff of only non-white cops has nothing to do with the colour of their skin. It has to do with the skin of those making the decision.
Could it be that black cops would be fired first because they have less seniority on average? (IIUC, it’s only relatively recently, in the larger scheme of things, that police forces even pretended to be more diverse.)
How is “seniority” relevant in relation to discriminatory hiring practices of the past? It didn’t become an all-white police force by accident any more then governments were all white.
When it’s an abuser’s excuse?
This whole thing reads like it could boil down to ‘Our contracts with the union mean we have to keep the people with seniority, so cutting our budget will make us fire all the new and diverse people, and you don’t really want that, do you?’
Which means it’s a set up for ‘Look at what you made me do!’ with a cover of ‘I had no choice, I was just following the contract’.
Because actually pressing charges and firing the real old-school trouble-makers who caused the problems in the first place would be too much work.
If they’re gonna do that, then screw seniority, contracts, whatever…. fire them all!
Then reform the PD from the ground up, hiring on basis of qualities that actually matter.
They’re required by contract to do layoffs in a certain way.
All this statement is is an effort to spin the effects of those contracts into an issue that might divide anti-racism protestors in the hopes that this will prevent the cuts from ever happening.
It’s divide and conquer, divide and conquer. Because they’re asshats.
Whoa. They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. We already knew SPD was racist, this just confirms it.