Five years after the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd ignited nationwide protests and a push for police reform, Boston’s journey towards redefining public safety appears stalled, as activists and city councilors shift focus away from cutting the police budget.
In the wake of the tragic event, Boston leaders, including then-Councilor Michelle Wu, advocated reallocating funds from the police department to support community-based organizations, with an eye on reducing police overtime expenses.
However, in a stark turn of events, Wu vetoed a proposed $3 million cut to the Boston Police Department’s budget of nearly $470 million last year.
This year, councilors seem hesitant to tackle the police budget again, allowing the Wu administration’s allocation of over $480 million for the BPD to remain intact.
During a city council meeting last week, students from Community Academy, a public school located in Jamaica Plain, urged council members to prioritize prevention funding over police expenditure, but their appeals seemingly fell on deaf ears.
Adama Bah, a ninth grader, implored the council for bold action, stating, “I’m asking you to have the courage to do something different. Invest in healing. Invest in us.”
At the meeting, Bah and her classmates found their voices overshadowed by representatives from various nonprofits benefiting from the state’s Shannon Grant program.
This initiative allocates $1.7 million in funding, directing $45,000 grants towards six police department units, including the Youth Violence Strike Force, the Homicide Unit, and the BPD School Police.
A third of the grant funds are claimed by city departments and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, with nonprofit representatives emphasizing how critical this funding is to their operations.
Rita Lara, executive director of Maverick Landing in East Boston, highlighted, “The funding enables us to create pockets of stability for young people.”
Similarly, Joseph Funari, who leads Roca’s Chelsea office, spoke to the grant’s role in fostering collaborations with police to, as he described, identify “high-risk youth.”
In a letter addressed to the council, Wu underscored the grant’s significance as a tool against gang violence, citing it as essential for coordinated prevention and intervention efforts involving law enforcement and community programs.
Despite assurances of efficacy, critics of the Shannon grant highlight that the funding structure may pressure organizations to align too closely with law enforcement, potentially stifling criticism.
Fatema Ahmad, executive director of the Muslim Justice League, articulated this concern, pointing out that the grant conditions create a dependency on police funding, hindering nonprofits from voicing legitimate concerns about policing.
By framing youth programs as anti-gang initiatives, these grants inadvertently reinforce a damaging stereotype of Boston’s youth as inherently criminal.
The students from Community Academy voiced their frustrations, arguing that they often face unwarranted suspicion from the Youth Violence Strike Force.
“We don’t want to live in neighborhoods where police are always checking us, always questioning us just because we’re Black,” Bah stated passionately.
Testimonies from the youths painted a troubling picture of interactions with law enforcement, as many described experiences characterized by harassment and illegal searches.
One senior, Kai, recounted a distressing encounter where he and his friends were surrounded by police and subjected to an illegal search of their car, which he insisted was unwarranted by probable cause.
Constitutionally protected against unlawful searches and seizures, Boston teens expressed frustration at being routinely targeted by police.
Aniyah Stephens, another senior, recalled an incident where police searched her friend for allegedly smoking in a park, articulating feelings of being marginalized.
Declining crime rates in Boston challenge the narrative of an urgent need for heavy policing.
Despite some claims of increasing youth violence, data reveals a steady decline in violent crime over recent decades.
In fact, Boston’s murder rate reached its lowest point since 1957 last year, and the city’s violent crime rate decreased from 1,339 incidents per 100,000 people in 2006 to just 462 incidents per 100,000 people in 2024.
Yet, the number of sworn police officers has remained surprisingly consistent, with the force comprising 2,139 officers in 2024, only slightly more than in 2004, amidst the significant drop in crime.
Kendra Lara, a former city councilor and street worker, now leading Sisters Unchained, noted this discrepancy and urged for a reevaluation of police force sizes relative to crime rates.
“If we want the number of police officers to be proportionate to the amount of crime in the city, we should be shrinking the number of officers, not increasing it,” she argued.
Aside from the students’ testimony and a demonstration by the Youth Justice Power Union—an organization that does not benefit from Shannon Grant funding—public opposition to the police budget was notably minimal this year.
The police budget, nearly half a billion dollars, dwarfs funding allocated to youth-serving organizations.
Lara accentuated that relying too heavily on police funding is not a sustainable crime prevention strategy, citing multiple studies indicating that higher investment in community organizations correlates with lower crime rates.
“The data shows it’s more effective to make investments in community-based organizations than it is to keep inflating police budgets,” Lara concluded.
“Safe cities are safe because of investments in communities.”
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