The usual Youtube news feed reveals the following:
26 seconds of “Seattle City Council Defunding Police, Slash Jobs and Salaries”, and that’s it. This is quoted on a display card authored by Barnini Chakraborty, of whom is a feature writer for Fox News (and a Journalist by Twitter trade).
Regardless, WE DO OUR RESEARCH!!!
Seattle city council tweets the following, in relation to the above clip:
“NEWS RELEASE: @cmkshama issued the following news release following today’s City Council vote adopting a revised 2020 budget. Sawant was the sole vote against the legislation. https://council.seattle.gov/2020/08/10/councilmember-sawant-city-council-democrats-have-approved-a-budget-that-carries-out-austerity-fails-to-defund-police-our-movement-needs-to-build-even-stronger/“
So, lets see what we got on this Seattle Government Website. It does Identify the Jobs and Salaries that were cut. Awesome!
“We won a small reduction in the police department, showing both the strength of our movement and also the imperative to continue organizing and fighting. “
It’s not specific….I’d rather it be rather specific, but I suppose it’s not saying “we killed off our entire police force”. Seattle publicly provides it’s police force statistics, so out of a city population of 747,300 (2019) with a force of “1,325 deployable, 1,433 total” (1 officer per 564 people), even if a small amount was 49% you’d still have 649 officers that were considered able to be employed because they embodied what a Police Officer was. I can be fine with that. There is always room to hire properly trained and legit people after a mass firing.
“Our movement succeeded in reducing the bloated salaries of the 13 top SPD executives, winning an amendment in Budget Committee meetings last week and then fending off a last-minute sneak attack today by the Democratic establishment.”
So they made it so that Seattle Police Executives are not paid more than Mayors in other states. I’m sure if there were stocks/options that they could offer those and might be spun a bit differently in the media, but that’s not how cities work. As an Executive, if you perform a good job, you get paid, but if you do a shit job, you either get paid less or you get told to find a new job.
So, chalk one up for the 26 seconds of statements that are true, but still completely misleading.