New Orleans ended furloughs for public safety workers on Monday, tapping into a line of credit to exempt police, firefighters and others from a citywide policy aimed at stemming the fiscal crisis brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.
Councilman Paul Krekorian called for his colleagues to scale back that list by nearly two-thirds, and seek to find savings elsewhere — possibly from other city agencies.
The report said that the LAPD cuts would bring the sworn police force down to 8,800, which matches 2002 levels.
“The Board of Directors for the Los Angeles Police Protective League is unanimous in its belief that its members deserve every penny of compensation that our contract prescribes. Period,” league president Craig Lally wrote to the city’s head labor negotiator.
The move to cancel APD cadet classes through June 2021 capped off Austin’s budget process. But it also capped off several months of waiting for cadets, some of whom moved from other places like California, Florida and Washington, D.C. Many of them left jobs to join the force.
The Wichita (KS) City Council recently approved a budget for the 2021-2022 fiscal year that included $99 million for the police department, an increase of more than seven million dollars over last year, despite cries from citizens and advocacy groups to defund the department.
Chief Carmen Best announced her retirement just hours after the city council approved a budget that would reallocate monies originally slated to be put toward the police department to community programs
The total overtime costs for the Portland Police Bureau through late July—the end of the last pay period—is almost $5.4 million. Further, accrued "comp time" will cost around $1.2 million.
Most of the proposals, including cuts aimed at the department’s SWAT team, encampment-removal team and mounted unit, appear to have enough support to pass.
While there have been calls across the country to "defund" police departments and have the funding reallocated to other providers of social services, one city in Florida is bucking that trend and increasing the budget for the police department by nearly $30 million annually.