Public safety at the breaking point
During this week’s contentious City Council meetings centered on defunding SPD, Council Member Andrew Lewis invoked the African proverb “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” But the Council’s majority seems driven by a more modern axiom; “Move fast and break things.”
Coined by internet entrepreneurs who believed taking risks and failing were necessary to success, when applied to upending the existing public safety model, the stakes for failure are life and death--especially when there’s no back up plan.
To be clear, there’s no time to waste in eradicating institutional racism and violence against BIPOC Americans. But instead of working on a strategy with other elected and civic leaders including the Mayor and City’s African American Chief of Police, the Council decided to go it alone, fueled by the anger of protesters and advised by select groups.
Lacking an overarching plan and metrics, their grand vision amounted to a series of haphazard hacks at SPD line items. Eliminating implicit bias training and slashing police leadership salaries may leave the department less well-trained and demoralized but it does nothing to improve public safety.
Downtown residents are still looking for a public safety plan beyond a defund slogan. No matter how many times the budget committee chair described the Council’s process as "robust" it felt like governing on the fly.
A few hours after the Council’s vote, the breakdown in communication and cooperation resulted in SPD Chief Best's resignation. That should be a wake-up call. After months of turmoil, it’s time to start rebuilding.
Improving public safety requires input from all stakeholders. Those who choose to go it alone may find it easy to break things but it’s also true, “if you break it, you own it.”
