'Silent Majority' Prevails for Now as Seattle Police Budget Cuts Fall Short of BLM Goals

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People hold signs as they take part in a rally in support of police and other law enforcement officers, Wednesday, July 15, 2020, in front of City Hall in Seattle. The group was met by a small group of counter protesters from Black Lives Matter and other groups. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
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A lot went down yesterday in Seattle and it’s not going to make the radical leftists happy.

As my colleague Sister Toldjah reported earlier, the police chief Carmen Best decided to hang it up, sending in her retirement letter.

Reports are it will be effective on September 2. She served almost 30 years with the SPD.

You really can’t blame her, given the way the city council have conducted themselves in regard to both her and the police department. While they took back some of the cuts against her salary that they voted on last week, it was still a slap in the face and a seeming retaliation for being against cuts. Plus given they weren’t consulting her at all about whatever cuts they were considering, they were basically telling her they didn’t care about anything she had to say.

Good luck getting anyone else of her quality to take this hellscape of a job. Who would ever want to step into this?

The council did go ahead with a vote to cut the department, but it was far less than the 50% the majority had previously said they would agree to and what the BLM/Antifa defund characters wanted, as King 5 explained.

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Budget measures approved Monday will trim about $3 million of the department’s $400 million annual budget this year. The cuts could reduce the police department by up to 100 officers through layoffs and attrition. Seattle has about 1,400 police officers and the reductions fall far short of the 50% cut to the department that many Black Lives Matter protesters were seeking.

Now obviously that’s not good and they still signaled that they intended to do more in the future, it seems clear that the silent majority speaking up impacted their decision so that they didn’t dare to a fifty percent cut now or they’d all be thrown out.

As we previously reported, the ‘silent majority’ came out in force by the thousands on Sunday and were not silent, demanding to “defend the SPD” and “no” on a 50% defund cut, and many had been speaking out against the plan.

The council had to be feeling that and you could hear them finally seeming to hear that over the last couple of weeks.

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King 5 outlined some of the things the council planned to cut, including training and recruitment. How does that make police any better? No one seems to be able to explain how cutting the police force stops racism or makes cops better. But Council Member Lisa Herbold, in a salve to the BLM folks, for not giving them what they wanted, said it was a first step in righting “historic wrongs.” Kshama Sawant the socialist member who had been behind the 50% push voted against the deal because in her mind it didn’t go far enough.

So although there may be some cuts and they’re completely ridiculous, the people appear to have helped head off the true disaster of a 50% cut.

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