Sam Levin reports on the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill passed in early 2021:
As part of the American Rescue Plan Act (Arpa), the Biden administration’s signature stimulus package, the US government sent funds to cities to help them fight coronavirus and support local recovery efforts. The money, officials said, could be used to fund a range of services, including public health and housing initiatives, healthcare workers’ salaries, infrastructure investments and aid for small businesses.
That sounds nice. But Levin reports that most of the money went instead to police:
San Francisco received $312m in Arpa funds for fiscal year 2020 and allocated 49% ($153m) to police, 13% ($41m) to the sheriff’s department....Los Angeles spent roughly 50% of its first round of Arpa relief funds on the LAPD....Fresno spent $36.6m of its Cares funds on the police, making up 67% of Cares spending on city salaries....San Jose allocated roughly $27.8m of its Cares and Arpa funds to police salaries....Long Beach allocated the majority of its $135.8 million Arpa funds to police....Oakland allocated $5m (13.5%) of its Cares funds to police salaries; Sacramento allocated $2.2m (2.5%) of Cares funds to police; and San Diego spent roughly $60.1m (64%) of its Cares funds on police in fiscal year 2020, and $52.6m (33%) in fiscal year 2021.
That's about $700 million just for those cities alone, which suggests that California spent upwards of a billion dollars in COVID money on police—and that was only for about half of 2021. If the rest of the country did the same, you can figure the total was on the order of $10 billion in six months or so.
So much for defunding the police. The next question is: what exactly was this money spent on? More cops? Higher paid cops? More overtime for cops? Cool new equipment? Or did it just make up for lost tax dollars that had been used to pay cops before COVID?
It turns out that cities are very reluctant to tell us. I wonder why?
California cities didn't already have enough funding for military-grade equipment & training?
Overtime.
Protests.
Flash mob looting.
""""It turns out that cities are very reluctant to tell us. I wonder why?"""""
Couple of reasons
First from the GOP side is PROVES that defund the police was a very bad political slogan that had no basis in reality. Conversely, increasing police funding and then having mass shootings in particular cities shows - from a GOP standpoint - that gun control laws don't work
From a DEM standpoint if overall crime goes down they can look to the increased funding to hammer the GOP that the DEM party is more Law & Order than the GOP is.
No matter the context of the argument both DEM and Republicans alike can find some statistic to use as "proof" their arguments are correct.
Stats are funny things that are manipulated by both parties.
Florida COVID deaths were manipulated by deSantis to make is look like his keep the economy open no matter what worked.
Biden's getting everyone to home test no renders all official COVID stats as being wrong as too many people will NOT admit to testing positive after taking a home test.
Biden can then declare "victory" over COVID while wastewater sampling is showing sharp increases in many municipalities across the country right now.
If the stats go against your argument then just change them !!! Or, keep the results quiet
It's the American way
I actually favor hiring more police when needed to meet patrol needs and reduce overtime. Research is clear that long hours on any job are associated with poorer judgment and performance. Much as the officers and their unions may like the overtime pay, it does not serve the public interest.
New hiring should be focused on increasing diversity and connection to the community.
Additional training should also be a priority, especially in de-escalation, community relations, protection of lawful protests.
The early round of stimulus funding that went to local governments had to be spent very quickly and specifically. Many spent it on overtime and hazard pay. Often, spending it on police was easier, and freed up local tax dollars to be spent in other ways. The second big round of funding didn't need to be spent so quickly, so it is being handled much more strategically, at least in the local governments I work with.
Construction details, I suspect.
Highly funded and ham-fisted effort to subvert Secret Service agents results in four of them being suspended so apparently it succeeded,
https://www.rawstory.com/special-police-investigation-unit/
This is the affidavit,
https://www.scribd.com/document/568471574/Taherzadeh-and-Ali-Affidavit
The striking thing here is that this was apparently uncovered by sheer chance.
Likely a nothing burger, early on in the pandemic Police were first responders to all sorts of medical calls. Easy enough to look at the logs and chart out if SF and LA had spikes in incidents responded to, and therefore used up lost of labor to cover.
Kinda makes you wonder what a billion dollars spent on reducing homelessness would have done. And would that help reduce the need for policing?