https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ABv3stdem4
Friday, August 21, 2020
We Need to Throw More Criminal Businesspeople in Jail
BYARI RABIN-HAVT
White-collar crime is barely prosecuted in the United States. It’s time for that to change.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/08/donald-trump-doj-white-collar-crime-jail
Donald Trump loves tweeting the words “law and order,” fully committed to the idea that communicating to his base with racist dog whistles at the volume of a jet engine is the best way to win reelection.
Unsurprisingly, his cries of “law and order” don’t apply to criminals from his own social strata. The Trump administration has been a boon to white-collar criminals whose lawbreaking is basically being ignored by its Justice Department. The data is staggering.
Prosecutions over the first three years of Donald Trump’s term, when compared with Barack Obama’s last twenty months in office, are down between 26 and 30 percent. Taking into account the Obama Justice Department saw sharp declines in white-collar prosecutions after 2010, the Trump administration’s inaction is staggering.
It’s not just prosecutions that are in decline. Corporate fines have fallen 76 percent over the same period. Additionally, IRS criminal investigations dropped 36 percent between 2015 and 2019.
After the 2008 financial crisis, the total lack of criminal accountability for those who crashed the economy was one of the chief complaints about the Obama Justice Department. Even Ted Kaufman, who was Joe Biden’s Senate chief of staff for two decades, was appointed to replace him in the Senate, and currently heads his transition team, was vocal about his criticisms, writing in 2013, “‘Have we really gotten to the point where we are afraid to prosecute a Wall Street executive for stealing millions while we send some teenager who steals $20 from the corner store to prison?” He continued, “The fact is, the behavior of some on Wall Street led directly to millions of Americans losing their jobs or their houses. We must do all we can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Kaufman was particularly incensed with the DOJ’s Criminal Division leader Lanny Breuer’s explanation that “In reaching every charging decision, we must take into account the effect of an indictment on innocent employees and shareholders, just as we must take into account the nature of the crimes committed and the pervasiveness of the misconduct.”
Now in 2020 it is clear that corporate criminals are hard at work looting this country, and in the Trump Justice Department, they don’t even need the get-out-of-jail-free card of being too big to jail. His justice department seems intent on doing nothing.
Writing in the New Republic, former financial fraud prosecutor Ankush Khardori listed the problems he has seen in the Trump Justice Department: “Relative disinterest in real-world fraud; an obliviousness to the sophistication of criminals who many see as nuisances but who are in fact wreaking widespread havoc; and high-level ineptitude by previously low-level prosecutors who somehow managed to rise quickly in recent years. Together, these trends point to the precarious state of our white-collar criminal enforcement program under the Trump administration.”
When your boss is a financial criminal, how likely are you to want to put financial criminals in prison?
Joe Biden on the other hand should heed the advice of his friend and former chief of staff. Cracking down on white-collar crime is the right thing to do both morally and legally. The political argument for increased white-collar crime prosecutions is even stronger.
While tens of millions remain out of work, and millions lose their health care, housing, and don’t know where their next meal will come from, wealthy corporations and individuals profited immensely from the generous corporate bailouts, that they often were not entitled to.
After talking a big game of prosecuting those who improperly took Paycheck Protection Program loans, the Trump administration decided to give safe harbor to those who simply returned the ill-gotten money — no questions asked. But PPP is just one example of the unscrupulous corporate behavior that has made headlines lately.
The brazenness of the insider trading surrounding the now “paused” government loan to Kodak that resulted in a bonanza for those with nonpublic knowledge was only surprising to those who believe anyone will face actual criminal accountability for their actions. On the day before the loan was announced, eight times as many shares in the company were traded than on an average day. The stock price gained as much as 500 percent after the loan was made public.
This is exactly the type of behavior insider trading laws were designed to prevent. Furthermore, the company’s CEO and a board member purchased thousands of shares while the company was negotiating the loan with the federal government.
There is a deep understanding that there are two different worlds of justice. One for the wealthy and well-connected, and one for the poor and marginalized. So while we denounce the reactionary rhetoric of “law and order,” we must push the next administration to the pursuit of the criminals, Trump included, who have been allowed to run amuck. It is true that the regular, legal sort of exploitation that is commonplace in the United States is an outrage in and of interest. But the billionaire looting that has taken place during this pandemic has gone to new extremes. Making it clear that it will have consequences is an important political act that can help us secure more expansive social rights in the future.
As Ted Kaufman put it, “Criminal prosecutions are not just about punishing the guilty. They also send a message that we as a society will not allow similar misconduct in the future.”
PROGRESSIVE BOSTON DOCTOR SEEKS TO UNSEAT “DO-NOTHING MODERATE DEMOCRAT” IN CONGRESS
Robbie Goldstein is challenging incumbent Rep. Stephen Lynch, the most conservative member of the Massachusetts delegation.
Rachel M. Cohen
August 16 2020, 6:00 a.m.
https://theintercept.com/2020/08/16/boston-stephen-lynch-robbie-goldstein-democrat-primary/
WITH JUST OVER two weeks left until the Massachusetts Democratic primary, progressives across the country are focused on the high-profile primaries of Sen. Ed Markey, who is fending off a challenge from Rep. Joe Kennedy, and Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, who is running against House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal.
Elsewhere in the state, other progressive challengers are struggling to attract similar attention. In the crowded House race to replace Kennedy, two progressives appear tied for third behind two more conservative Democrats. And in the Boston-area 8th Congressional District, Robbie Goldstein, a 36-year-old primary care physician, is scrambling to get his name out and convince voters he’s not running a long-shot bid.
On Wednesday, Goldstein’s campaign released a poll claiming he trailed just 7 percentage points behind nine-term moderate incumbent Rep. Stephen Lynch. Conducted last weekend by Lincoln Park Strategies, the poll found that 29 percent of likely voters remain undecided. However, Lynch held a clear advantage when it came to name recognition, with roughly 70 percent of voters knowing who he was, compared to 40 percent recognizing Goldstein. Still, the pollsters concluded Goldstein “has a real chance to win” because among undecideds, 42 percent said they’d prefer to vote for a more progressive candidate, 71 percent said they’d prefer a pro-choice candidate, and 73 percent said they’d prefer a candidate who backs Medicare for All.
Goldstein’s case against Lynch rests on substantive policy differences, including Medicare for All and reproductive rights. The incumbent opposes single-payer health care, and while Lynch has criticized federal efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and “draconian” state-level abortion restrictions, he himself identifies as pro-life and believes ending pregnancies should be “legal and rare.”
Goldstein’s campaign argues that this race presents a viable opportunity to bring another progressive to Congress, even if Lynch is not as influential as other incumbents who’ve been toppled, like Reps. Joe Crowley and Eliot Engel. “I am constantly confounded by progressives’ infatuation with claiming these big headline victories instead of just winning and building power,” said Karen Clawson Cosmas, Goldstein’s campaign manager. “We can replace a do-nothing moderate Democrat with someone who is actually a champion of the issues of the progressive wing of the party.”
Lynch has long been the most conservative member of the Massachusetts delegation, though he argues that’s all relative for their deep blue state. “Calling me the least liberal member from Massachusetts is like calling me the slowest Kenyan in the Boston Marathon,” Lynch quipped a decade ago in the Boston Globe.
Goldstein is hoping for a surge in the final weeks — similar to what Cori Bush saw recently in St. Louis, and Jamaal Bowman in New York — though Goldstein trails them both in fundraising and major endorsements, and he has far less name recognition than Bush, a Ferguson activist who ran for Congress in 2018 and was featured in a documentary alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. By the end of June, Goldstein had raised just $292,000, next to Lynch’s $660,000, though Goldstein did raise more in June than in the previous five months combined.
To some extent Goldstein is banking on complacency from his opponent. In the last quarter Lynch raised just $45,000, and has spent no money to date on TV or Facebook ads. Also, unlike some of his Massachusetts colleagues running for reelection, Lynch has had no members of Congress campaigning on his behalf. Goldstein says this is a reflection of his opponent “not having any friends left in Washington.”
Goldstein, meanwhile, is backed by left-wing groups like Indivisible, Our Revolution, Progressive Massachusetts, and even the Boston Teachers Union. Justice Democrats, which endorsed Morse, has stayed out of this primary, after having considered backing another progressive physician, Mohammad Dar, who entered the race almost a year before Goldstein did, but dropped out early due to personal reasons.
Lynch’s campaign spokesperson, Scott Ferson, said they are confident about the representative’s standing in the district and resources available left to campaign. “We have a voter engagement plan in place, and he’s not fundraising just to stockpile money,” Ferson said. “He’s doing things in a way that fits this race.”
LYNCH, WHO GREW up poor in South Boston public housing and spent two decades as an ironworker, was first elected to Congress in 2001. He represents a district that over the last two decades has grown both more diverse and more gentrified. Following the 2010 Census, Lynch’s district boundaries were redrawn, and while Joe Biden won every city and town in the 8th Congressional District on Super Tuesday, Goldstein says there’s a real path to victory, since Warren and Bernie Sanders racked up more votes in the district overall than Biden.
An Irish Catholic proud of his ties to blue-collar workers, Lynch has voiced concerns about the party drifting too far left and is critical of the term “socialism,” which he warns could scare off older voters. Ferson argues that Lynch remains “well-in-tune” with his district and has handily defeated candidates who have run to his left in the past. In 2018, Lynch was challenged by Brianna Wu, a software engineer who ran on Medicare for All and tackling income inequality, and beat her with 71 percent of the vote.
The sharpest contrast between the two candidates revolves around health care. Ironically one of Lynch’s biggest vulnerabilities is that he was just one of 45 House Democrats to vote against the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and of those Democrats, only three remain in Congress. Rep. Dan Lipinski, one of the three, lost his primary in March to progressive challenger Marie Newman.
At the time, Lynch explained he voted no because he felt the final version gave too much power to the insurance industry and would lead to spiking prices, and he opposed how the bill taxed union health care plans and eliminated opportunities for state public options.
“I don’t think [Lynch] is as conservative as Lipinski, but I do think the thing that sticks with people here is him having voted against the Affordable Care Act, given how much activism there was around that,” said Jonathan Cohn, a leader with Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide advocacy group. “People remember that.”
Lynch, for his part, has criticized Goldstein for trying to “rip out the ACA root and branch” and says he’s proud of the work done to repeal the tax on union health care plans. Goldstein “wants to dismantle the ACA and get rid of it, so if you ask me who really supports the ACA, that’s Stephen,” said Ferson, Lynch’s spokesperson.
Lynch, who has long self-described as an anti-abortion Democrat, notably began moving left in 2013, when he ran against Ed Markey for the Senate seat left open when John Kerry became secretary of state. As a state legislator in Massachusetts, Lynch tried to ban abortions after 24 weeks, and in Congress he voted to support the “partial-birth abortion” ban. But in 2013, Lynch made clear that while he was pro-life and wanted abortions to remain “rare,” he would seek to protect Roe v. Wade and vote against any Supreme Court nominee who wanted to overturn the decision.
He’s moved even further left in recent years. In 2019, he wrote a Boston Globe op-ed condemning states for their new abortion restrictions and Congress for trying to defund Planned Parenthood. “If these recent developments define the ‘pro-life’ movement, you can count me out,” he wrote. Lynch received 100 percent ratings from NARAL Pro-Choice America for the last five years, but neither NARAL nor Planned Parenthood is endorsing in the primary.
Goldstein, who has also been endorsed by local chapters of the Sunrise Movement, is campaigning on being more aggressive on climate change than the incumbent. Lynch was an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, though has said the 10-year timetable outlined in the resolution to transition completely off fossil fuels is “unrealistic.” Lynch originally was a strong supporter of the Keystone Pipeline, but reversed his position on that in 2013. In a recent primary debate, Lynch urged viewers to look at his ratings from the League of Conservation Voters, where he has a “lifetime score” of 95 percent.
Goldstein has repeatedly blasted Lynch for once calling climate change an “elitist” issue, a charge based on a 2017 CommonWealth magazine article, though the full quote and context is not included in the piece. Lynch has denied using that descriptor.
While Lynch’s campaign disputes that he used that exact word, Ferson, his spokesperson, linked the sentiment to Lynch’s background as an ironworker and the congressman’s belief that lawmakers shouldn’t be “cavalier” when discussing job loss associated with transitioning off fossil fuels. “I think it’s in the context of who do we need to include when we’re having those discussions,” said Ferson. “And he supports the Green New Deal in part because it’s so focused on creating new jobs.”
Shawn Zeller, the author of the CommonWealth article who now works as an editor at CQ Roll Call, told The Intercept that Lynch had made the reference in the context of his support for Tim Ryan for House speaker. “Trump had just won the presidency and Lynch was among those who felt Pelosi was leading the party too far left,” Zeller wrote in an email. “In an interview with me, he mentioned climate change as an example and said he preferred Democrats focus on lunch bucket issues to help the working class.”
On issues of immigration, there are differences between the candidates too. Over the objections of President Barack Obama in 2015, Lynch voted to tighten vetting standards for refugees from Iraq and Syria, and in 2018 he voted in favor of a resolution lauding Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even when 133 House Democrats just voted “present.” While Lynch has condemned President Donald Trump’s child separation policy and backed a 2019 resolution to establish standards of care at border facilities, some of his constituents say he’s moved too slowly, and been too quiet overall.
“He’s just not interested in engaging with constituents who are looking for someone with a sense of urgency,” said Tonya Tedesco, a Boston activist who organized trips to Lynch’s district offices last summer to press him on immigration. “We are in crisis mode and I do not know that he recognizes that.”
Rachel M. Cohen
August 16 2020, 6:00 a.m.
https://theintercept.com/2020/08/16/boston-stephen-lynch-robbie-goldstein-democrat-primary/
WITH JUST OVER two weeks left until the Massachusetts Democratic primary, progressives across the country are focused on the high-profile primaries of Sen. Ed Markey, who is fending off a challenge from Rep. Joe Kennedy, and Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, who is running against House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal.
Elsewhere in the state, other progressive challengers are struggling to attract similar attention. In the crowded House race to replace Kennedy, two progressives appear tied for third behind two more conservative Democrats. And in the Boston-area 8th Congressional District, Robbie Goldstein, a 36-year-old primary care physician, is scrambling to get his name out and convince voters he’s not running a long-shot bid.
On Wednesday, Goldstein’s campaign released a poll claiming he trailed just 7 percentage points behind nine-term moderate incumbent Rep. Stephen Lynch. Conducted last weekend by Lincoln Park Strategies, the poll found that 29 percent of likely voters remain undecided. However, Lynch held a clear advantage when it came to name recognition, with roughly 70 percent of voters knowing who he was, compared to 40 percent recognizing Goldstein. Still, the pollsters concluded Goldstein “has a real chance to win” because among undecideds, 42 percent said they’d prefer to vote for a more progressive candidate, 71 percent said they’d prefer a pro-choice candidate, and 73 percent said they’d prefer a candidate who backs Medicare for All.
Goldstein’s case against Lynch rests on substantive policy differences, including Medicare for All and reproductive rights. The incumbent opposes single-payer health care, and while Lynch has criticized federal efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and “draconian” state-level abortion restrictions, he himself identifies as pro-life and believes ending pregnancies should be “legal and rare.”
Goldstein’s campaign argues that this race presents a viable opportunity to bring another progressive to Congress, even if Lynch is not as influential as other incumbents who’ve been toppled, like Reps. Joe Crowley and Eliot Engel. “I am constantly confounded by progressives’ infatuation with claiming these big headline victories instead of just winning and building power,” said Karen Clawson Cosmas, Goldstein’s campaign manager. “We can replace a do-nothing moderate Democrat with someone who is actually a champion of the issues of the progressive wing of the party.”
Lynch has long been the most conservative member of the Massachusetts delegation, though he argues that’s all relative for their deep blue state. “Calling me the least liberal member from Massachusetts is like calling me the slowest Kenyan in the Boston Marathon,” Lynch quipped a decade ago in the Boston Globe.
Goldstein is hoping for a surge in the final weeks — similar to what Cori Bush saw recently in St. Louis, and Jamaal Bowman in New York — though Goldstein trails them both in fundraising and major endorsements, and he has far less name recognition than Bush, a Ferguson activist who ran for Congress in 2018 and was featured in a documentary alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. By the end of June, Goldstein had raised just $292,000, next to Lynch’s $660,000, though Goldstein did raise more in June than in the previous five months combined.
To some extent Goldstein is banking on complacency from his opponent. In the last quarter Lynch raised just $45,000, and has spent no money to date on TV or Facebook ads. Also, unlike some of his Massachusetts colleagues running for reelection, Lynch has had no members of Congress campaigning on his behalf. Goldstein says this is a reflection of his opponent “not having any friends left in Washington.”
Goldstein, meanwhile, is backed by left-wing groups like Indivisible, Our Revolution, Progressive Massachusetts, and even the Boston Teachers Union. Justice Democrats, which endorsed Morse, has stayed out of this primary, after having considered backing another progressive physician, Mohammad Dar, who entered the race almost a year before Goldstein did, but dropped out early due to personal reasons.
Lynch’s campaign spokesperson, Scott Ferson, said they are confident about the representative’s standing in the district and resources available left to campaign. “We have a voter engagement plan in place, and he’s not fundraising just to stockpile money,” Ferson said. “He’s doing things in a way that fits this race.”
LYNCH, WHO GREW up poor in South Boston public housing and spent two decades as an ironworker, was first elected to Congress in 2001. He represents a district that over the last two decades has grown both more diverse and more gentrified. Following the 2010 Census, Lynch’s district boundaries were redrawn, and while Joe Biden won every city and town in the 8th Congressional District on Super Tuesday, Goldstein says there’s a real path to victory, since Warren and Bernie Sanders racked up more votes in the district overall than Biden.
An Irish Catholic proud of his ties to blue-collar workers, Lynch has voiced concerns about the party drifting too far left and is critical of the term “socialism,” which he warns could scare off older voters. Ferson argues that Lynch remains “well-in-tune” with his district and has handily defeated candidates who have run to his left in the past. In 2018, Lynch was challenged by Brianna Wu, a software engineer who ran on Medicare for All and tackling income inequality, and beat her with 71 percent of the vote.
The sharpest contrast between the two candidates revolves around health care. Ironically one of Lynch’s biggest vulnerabilities is that he was just one of 45 House Democrats to vote against the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and of those Democrats, only three remain in Congress. Rep. Dan Lipinski, one of the three, lost his primary in March to progressive challenger Marie Newman.
At the time, Lynch explained he voted no because he felt the final version gave too much power to the insurance industry and would lead to spiking prices, and he opposed how the bill taxed union health care plans and eliminated opportunities for state public options.
“I don’t think [Lynch] is as conservative as Lipinski, but I do think the thing that sticks with people here is him having voted against the Affordable Care Act, given how much activism there was around that,” said Jonathan Cohn, a leader with Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide advocacy group. “People remember that.”
Lynch, for his part, has criticized Goldstein for trying to “rip out the ACA root and branch” and says he’s proud of the work done to repeal the tax on union health care plans. Goldstein “wants to dismantle the ACA and get rid of it, so if you ask me who really supports the ACA, that’s Stephen,” said Ferson, Lynch’s spokesperson.
Lynch, who has long self-described as an anti-abortion Democrat, notably began moving left in 2013, when he ran against Ed Markey for the Senate seat left open when John Kerry became secretary of state. As a state legislator in Massachusetts, Lynch tried to ban abortions after 24 weeks, and in Congress he voted to support the “partial-birth abortion” ban. But in 2013, Lynch made clear that while he was pro-life and wanted abortions to remain “rare,” he would seek to protect Roe v. Wade and vote against any Supreme Court nominee who wanted to overturn the decision.
He’s moved even further left in recent years. In 2019, he wrote a Boston Globe op-ed condemning states for their new abortion restrictions and Congress for trying to defund Planned Parenthood. “If these recent developments define the ‘pro-life’ movement, you can count me out,” he wrote. Lynch received 100 percent ratings from NARAL Pro-Choice America for the last five years, but neither NARAL nor Planned Parenthood is endorsing in the primary.
Goldstein, who has also been endorsed by local chapters of the Sunrise Movement, is campaigning on being more aggressive on climate change than the incumbent. Lynch was an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, though has said the 10-year timetable outlined in the resolution to transition completely off fossil fuels is “unrealistic.” Lynch originally was a strong supporter of the Keystone Pipeline, but reversed his position on that in 2013. In a recent primary debate, Lynch urged viewers to look at his ratings from the League of Conservation Voters, where he has a “lifetime score” of 95 percent.
Goldstein has repeatedly blasted Lynch for once calling climate change an “elitist” issue, a charge based on a 2017 CommonWealth magazine article, though the full quote and context is not included in the piece. Lynch has denied using that descriptor.
While Lynch’s campaign disputes that he used that exact word, Ferson, his spokesperson, linked the sentiment to Lynch’s background as an ironworker and the congressman’s belief that lawmakers shouldn’t be “cavalier” when discussing job loss associated with transitioning off fossil fuels. “I think it’s in the context of who do we need to include when we’re having those discussions,” said Ferson. “And he supports the Green New Deal in part because it’s so focused on creating new jobs.”
Shawn Zeller, the author of the CommonWealth article who now works as an editor at CQ Roll Call, told The Intercept that Lynch had made the reference in the context of his support for Tim Ryan for House speaker. “Trump had just won the presidency and Lynch was among those who felt Pelosi was leading the party too far left,” Zeller wrote in an email. “In an interview with me, he mentioned climate change as an example and said he preferred Democrats focus on lunch bucket issues to help the working class.”
On issues of immigration, there are differences between the candidates too. Over the objections of President Barack Obama in 2015, Lynch voted to tighten vetting standards for refugees from Iraq and Syria, and in 2018 he voted in favor of a resolution lauding Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even when 133 House Democrats just voted “present.” While Lynch has condemned President Donald Trump’s child separation policy and backed a 2019 resolution to establish standards of care at border facilities, some of his constituents say he’s moved too slowly, and been too quiet overall.
“He’s just not interested in engaging with constituents who are looking for someone with a sense of urgency,” said Tonya Tedesco, a Boston activist who organized trips to Lynch’s district offices last summer to press him on immigration. “We are in crisis mode and I do not know that he recognizes that.”
AUSTIN’S VOTE TO “REIMAGINE” POLICING PROMPTS THREATS FROM STATE OFFICIALS
After the city council approved $150 million in budget cuts, Texas leaders proposed capping tax revenue for cities that defund police.
Jordan Smith
August 19 2020, 1:50 p.m.
https://theintercept.com/2020/08/19/austin-police-department-budget-cuts/
AHEAD OF THE Austin City Council’s budget meeting in mid-August, Kathy Mitchell, a longtime community organizer and grassroots lobbyist, “basically spent the week in a deep and broad anxiety,” she said. “I was just anxious for seven days.”
There was much at stake when the council members, mayor, and city manager met via Zoom on August 12 for a 14-hour hearing that included hundreds of city residents waiting for their minute to speak. For years, community groups had been agitating for change at the Austin Police Department. Those calls grew louder in late April after Austin police killed a man named Mike Ramos, and louder still in May, when the city, like so many others across the country, erupted in protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis. The protests in Austin were at times met with violence from police; at least two people suffered life-threatening injuries after officers fired so-called less lethal munitions at their heads.
Mitchell, who had been working with city leaders to pass a block of police reforms, was optimistic but still uncertain as the budget session drew near. “Oh, man. I have a habit of never counting my votes until the day that people actually vote,” she said. In the end, the 10-member council voted unanimously to cut, “decouple,” and redistribute roughly $150 million of the APD’s $434 million budget. “There’s no question that this is a big moment in Austin,” Mitchell said.
Indeed, Mitchell and others say that what happened in Austin is a big moment for the rest of the country too, potentially providing a road map for other municipalities that have pledged to cut police funding or dismantle their departments in the wake of Floyd’s killing, but that have so far had more limited success.
The Austin council voted on a three-tiered package of cuts to APD. The first, totaling roughly $21 million, are direct, immediate budget cuts. The next three cadet classes have been canceled — unless and until the department can revamp its academy, which has been called out for instilling a warrior cop mentality that is out of step with public service. Vacant positions have been cut, overtime has been curtailed, various contracts (for things like office supplies) will be slashed, and funding for automatic license plate readers has been axed. The pot of funds is being reallocated to workforce development, housing for the homeless, and substance abuse treatment, as well as to address food insecurity and increase health care access.
The second pot of money, about $80 million, is the decoupling fund. Primarily civilian-led endeavors like the Austin crime lab (which under APD was so mired in scandal that it shuttered its operations in 2016), victim services, and the 911 call center will be removed from police control. City leaders are also aiming to change the way the police themselves are policed, by moving the APD’s Internal Affairs and Special Investigations Unit outside of the department. Details on how those transitions will happen, what revamped services will look like, and who will control them will be worked out in the coming months.
The third pot of money, roughly $49 million, is being put into a “reimagine safety” fund, with the goal of removing additional duties — like traffic enforcement and response to mental health crises — from police. That money will instead go “toward alternative forms of public safety and community support,” according to a document compiled by council members.
“This is all complex and complicated, and there are lots of variables to consider,” said Natasha Harper-Madison, who is the council’s only Black member and has been on the leading edge of the city’s efforts at reform. “I think people need to know that there is nothing that’s happened by way of council action that was simple, or easy, or without recognitions of the nuance here.”
“The Police Can’t Run the City”
To date, other cities that have vowed to reimagine public safety have mostly taken more modest steps or hit stumbling blocks. In New York, for example, a vote to cut $1 billion from the NYPD’s $6 billion budget has been criticized as budgetary sleight of hand, while the bulk of the $150 million cut from the Los Angeles police budget will come from reducing overtime. In Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, budget cuts have not yet been identified and efforts to disband the police department have been stalled, likely until at least next year. While a majority of the Seattle City Council has endorsed a plan to defund police by 50 percent, the cuts have remained far below that and council members have taken some heat, including from Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County, for a ham-fisted approach that ostensibly forced the city’s first Black woman police chief, Carmen Best, to resign.
By comparison, Austin’s first effort toward a long-term redefinition of public safety has been more concrete. But it did not happen overnight, notes Scott Henson, a longtime criminal justice reformer and author of the influential blog Grits for Breakfast. Instead, the seeds for the changes voted on last week were planted years ago and have been doggedly tended to by a growing coalition of advocates across the city. In the wake of the Ramos and Floyd killings, he said, “we already had the coalition and the agenda” teed up for action.
Crucial to last week’s unanimous council vote, says Henson, was a fight that unfolded in 2017, when activists led by the Austin Justice Coalition decided to take on the local cop union, the Austin Police Association. Reformers wanted a seat at the table as the city negotiated a new contract with the union in order to ensure the adoption of meaningful oversight and transparency policies related to the disciplinary process. The union resisted, and in the end, the council voted down a roughly $83 million contract. Although the union dug in its heels, discontinued negotiations, and predicted that scores of officers would resign, that did not happen. Instead, everyone eventually sat back down and a contract with significant reforms was approved for far less money.
According to Chas Moore, founder and executive director of the Austin Justice Coalition, the whole episode showed the city’s elected officials that the sky would not fall if they challenged the union, which, as is widely the case, has long wielded tremendous political power, often to the detriment of meaningful reform. “I do think that kind of changed the culture of police power here in the city. Until that moment, police contracts in Austin, it was a rubber stamp process: They ask for everything and they get 99 percent of it,” Moore said. But “the world didn’t end after the police contract went to ‘no,’” he continued. “I think it allowed city council to really just understand, maybe we can trust in each other and the police can’t run the city.”
Although that lesson may have bolstered the council’s confidence during the budget session last week, not everyone was satisfied with the recent cuts. After the vote, Grassroots Leadership and Communities of Color United, which had called for a 50 percent reduction to the police budget, declared that “the budget passed today does not meet this moment.”
“‘Reimagining public safety’ does not mean simply reorganizing departments or taking the same functions that APD currently performs and moving them, complete with their current staff and culture, to a civilian department,” the groups said in a joint statement. “When we say ‘reimagine public safety,’ it’s a step beyond defunding the police. It means imagining a world where we don’t rely on cops, cages, and other punitive approaches to keep us safe.”
Moore understands the frustration, but he believes Austin has taken a powerful step toward that future. “Either we ask for the big thing and we don’t get nothing and then we’re stuck in the same place, or we can start chomping away at the elephant one bite at a time,” he said. “I think we took a pretty good chunk out when council took the vote last week.”
Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, state officials and other lawmakers from outside Austin were quick to decry the cuts and pledge legislative action against such “short-sighted efforts,” as a Dallas-area state senator put it. Gov. Greg Abbott pledged to have state police “stand in the gap” to protect the city, while George P. Bush, the elected state land commissioner, took to Twitter. He posted a video of a row of cars with broken windows in a parking garage downtown and implied that the vandalism had taken place the same night as the city council’s vote. “The need for police funding is as clear as ever,” he wrote. “This is a dangerous path to go down.”
The grandstanding was little more than transparent fearmongering. The city hasn’t cut any current positions, so there’s really no “gap” to stand in. Besides, the state police already play a big role in Austin, where they have jurisdiction over state property — including parking garages like the one where the vandalism Bush was decrying took place. State police said the vandalism actually happened on August 8, four days before the council vote, and was discovered during a routine patrol.
And state leaders have continued foaming at the mouth over the Austin council’s actions. On August 18, Abbott joined with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and state House Speaker Dennis Bonnen to suggest capping tax revenue for cities that dare “defund” police — though they did not respond to questions from the Houston Chronicle about exactly what that meant. “What they have done in Austin should never happen in any city in the state, and we’re going to pass legislation to be sure it never happens again,” Patrick said.
Part of what is frustrating to Harper-Madison is that she hasn’t seen department or police union leadership do much to communicate with officers about what the current cuts actually mean — and what they don’t mean, including layoffs. After she mentioned this during a recent interview, her phone blew up. She had lengthy conversations — some prickly — with officers across the department. Ultimately, she said they were positive. And she’s encouraged them to speak up as the city moves forward with plans to transform its approach to public safety, which she says is both necessary and long overdue. “The way forward is we have to have better conversations. We have to have more substantive conversations. If there’s no substance, then what’s the point?” she asks. “We’re just using words, and taking up space, and sucking up air that somebody else could use.”
Moore is also ready to push forward. “I just hope we can try to break the barriers of everything that has been socialized within us so we can truly allow ourselves to imagine and get creative with things outside of boxes, outside of what the norm is, so we can come up with something pretty groovy,” he said. He notes that major shifts in U.S. history have been rife with uncertainty: abolishing slavery, women’s suffrage, desegregation. “We always had these assumptions that the most terrible thing was going to happen if we stopped doing the status quo,” he said. “Yes, there’s still oppression and people are still fighting … but because we’ve taken these big steps in history, it’s only made us better.”
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