Los Angeles Mayor Cuts $250 million from LAPD Budget

The Mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, announced Wednesday that he will be cutting a huge chunk of the LAPD buget.

What We Know

• 100 Black organization including Black Lives Matter launched an open letter calling citizens to sign a petition to demand local officals decrese funding for police departments and allocate those funds to “spending on healthcare, education and community programs”. They Mayo of Los Angeles listened a sprung into action.
• In a press confrence on Wednesday, Mayor Garcetti said he wants to direct $250 million to “reinvesting in the black communities and communities of color”. Those funds are going to come from cuts to the proposed budget to “invest in jobs, in education and healing.”
• The L.A Police Commission President Eileen Decker then announced that $100 million- $150 million of theose cuts would come from the police department budget.
• Mayor Garcetti said he is making commitments to creating racial equality. “It’s time to move our rehtoric towards action to end racism in our city.”  He is “commited to making this a moment not just a moment”.
• L.A. City Councel President Nury Martinez made it official by introducing a motion to cut LAPD funding, “as we reset our priorities in the wake of the murder of #GeorgeFloyd. This is just one small step. We cannot talk about change, we have to be about change,” Martinez tweeted.

Today we intrdcd a motion to cut funding to the LAPD, as we reset our priorities in the wake of the murder of #GeorgeFloyd & the #BlackLivesMatter call that we all support to end racism. This is just one small step. We cannot talk about change, we have to be about change. pic.twitter.com/hR1tBAqwHP

— Nury Martinez (@NuryMartinezLA) June 3, 2020

• Mayor Garcetti also declared a moratorium on putting people in the gang data base. This will require all police officers to always report bad actions of fellow officers and increase discipline against those officers who break the rules.
• L.A. announced a Civil and Human Rights Commission that will have its first meeting next week, with a promise to have the department up and running by July 1. Thae department will include an Office of Racial Equity to help the city “apply ans equity lens to everything we do.”

Toward the end of the press conference the Mayor stated “We can’t walk to the promised land in a single day, but this is a start.”