NY Cop hits a homeless man with a police van after running a red light and dragged his body underneath the vehicle.
In somewhat semi-adjacent news, Mayor Eric Adams said this when speaking about his homeless encampment sweeps.
“I can’t help but to believe that if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John was here today, he would be on the streets with me helping people get out of encampments”
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.
But most large California cities spent millions of Arpa dollars on law enforcement. Some also gave police money from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (Cares) Act, adopted in 2020 under Donald Trump. The records show:
San Francisco received $312m in Arpa funds for
fiscal year 2020 and allocated 49% ($153m) to police, 13% ($41m) to the
sheriff’s department, and the remainder to the fire department,
according to the city controller. San Francisco also gave roughly 22%
($38.5m) of its Cares funds to law enforcement.
Los Angeles spent roughly 50% of its first round of Arpa relief funds on the LAPD, according to a public records request by the controller candidate Kenneth Mejia, and first reported in local news site LA Taco.
Fresno spent $36.6m of its Cares funds on the
police, making up 67% of Cares spending on city salaries, and roughly
40% of all of Fresno’s Cares funds.
San Jose allocated roughly $27.8m of its Cares
and Arpa funds to police salaries and the police dispatch department,
representing about 12% of its relief money.
Long Beach allocated
the majority of its $135.8 million Arpa funds to police, though a
spokesperson said a detailed breakdown of funds was not available.
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.
The budgeting and reporting process varies
by city and is often opaque, making it difficult to compare and analyze
how governments prioritized police and executed their budgets.
In
Fresno, the city allocated more than double of its Cares money to
police than it did to Covid testing, contact tracing, small business
grants, childcare vouchers and transitional housing combined. Oakland’s
police allocation was greater than the amounts spent on a housing initiative, a small business grant program and a workforce initiative.
San Jose, meanwhile, spent significantly more on housing services and
food programs than on law enforcement. And although Long Beach initially
reported that it was allocating 100% of its Arpa funds to police, a
spokesperson said $11.8m of those funds were now going to direct relief
grants and that a portion was also supporting the city’s parks and
marine departments.
