The following action is adapted from Decriminalize Seattle and Black Action Coalition:
The Seattle City Council will be voting on a heavily-amended police budget ordinance, CB 119981. Originally introduced to put an end to the Seattle Police Department’s overtime abuse and make meaningful investments in community, the bill has since been changed to give $10.9M back to SPD. This is a betrayal of the council’s commitment to public safety. Tell the council to reject CB 119981.
Sample Email:
To all Councilmembers: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Reject CB 119981 for the safety of our community
Dear City Councilmembers,
My name is __________ and I’m a resident of District ________.
The council should vote no on CB 119981. The bill was originally introduced as a consequence for SPD’s excess overtime spending in 2020. As stated in the council’s unanimously-supported Resolution 31962 in December, the intent was to reduce SPD’s budget by $5.4M, the same amount as the overspend. It also allowed for the community to capture an additional $5M of SPD’s ongoing salary savings (currently projected to be $11M+). All of the dollars taken from SPD would be used for community-led participatory budgeting, which addresses the root causes of harm in our communities.
Backtracking on those promises, the Public Safety and Human Services Committee significantly amended CB 119981 this spring, to the point where it now *increases* SPD’s spending capacity by $10.9M. If the council passes this bill, you would be rewarding the SPD for their violent activities last summer.
Do you remember what happened last summer?
The following testimony has been made public as part of an ACLU lawsuit. This particular story of SPD’s violence comes from a person identified as _______ and describes their experience on ________, 2020.
[Paste your selected incident quotation here.]
Sincerely,
__________
In this sample script, you have the option of adding your choice of testimony from the following link (*content warning: police violence*): http://www.spdviolence2020.com/incidents
For example (**content warning**):
“This particular story of SPD’s violence comes from a person identified as JK and describes their experience on May 30, 2020.
‘Shortly after 5:00 pm, JK was standing with a group of protesters about 25 feet away from the police, when she was suddenly and without provocation hit in the stomach by a rubber bullet…As a direct and proximate result of the police shooting JK with a rubber bullet, she suffered pain, trauma, and other damages, including but not limited to: a large contusion on her stomach.’”
