How can Boston improve public safety without over-incarcerating young Black men? How can money allocated to police be better spent to protect the public while also building more trust with the community?
That’s the serious conversation Boston needs to have. Hacking $31 million out of the Boston police budget without a clear plan for how to accomplish that larger mission is not the best way to start it. However, in an act of purely performative politics, the Boston City Council voted Wednesday to do just that.
Mayor Michelle Wu is restoring the $31 million to the police budget. In a letter to the City Council, she wrote that “the Council’s proposed reductions to the budget are illusory, as the city is obligated to cover salary and overtime expenses incurred by the department.” As she also told the Globe editorial board on Thursday, “A cut of that scale would be devastating. It would be completely disruptive to the operation of our public safety infrastructure.” Maintaining public confidence in public safety has been key, Wu said, to a “relatively strong” post-pandemic recovery and is important when it comes to “how we continue to attract businesses and support residents in healing after the pandemic.”
But who feels confident in the police, who doesn’t, and why? What would it take to reallocate money to change that? So far, this budget squabble doesn’t address those questions. While Wu is right to put the money back in the police budget, it is critically important for Boston to rethink how it invests in public safety.
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When the Council voted, 7-5, to make that $31 million cut, some of that money was supposed to come from the police department’s overtime budget. But overtime pay is built into the collective bargaining agreements negotiated between the city and the unions that represent police — agreements that are then approved by the councilors themselves. As long as police are allowed to work overtime, they are going to get paid. So, in the end, the money will come from somewhere, and every councilor knows that.
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The Wu administration, meanwhile, is in the midst of contract negotiations with police and firefighters, both of which appear to be moving closer to arbitration. With police, Wu is calling for, among other things, capping how much overtime officers can work. That’s the right way to tackle overtime, and if councilors really want to help, they should be ready to reject a contract that doesn’t include the kind of reforms Wu is seeking.
Posturing over the police department budget, and especially the bloated overtime part of it, has been going on for the last decade. But until the collective bargaining agreements between the city and police change, saying you will cut the overtime budget is pure theater. It can’t happen. It may be good election year politics for some city councilors but is unlikely to end with real policy change.
Unfortunately, this City Council vote also broke down along mostly racial lines. The five councilors who voted against the $31 million cut are white: Frank Baker, Gabriela “Gigi” Coletta, Michael Flaherty, Ed Flynn, and Erin Murphy. With the exception of Liz Breadon, the yes votes were all councilors of color: Ricardo Arroyo, Tania Fernandes Anderson, Kendra Lara, Ruthzee Louijeune, Julia Mejia, and Brian Worrell. That makes it an even more sensitive issue for Wu to address.
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Apart from the complicated issue of contract negotiation, it’s not that easy to stop the billing of police overtime. The drivers of it include a large number of officers who have been out on medical leave for more than a year and the paid detail system. Boston is also losing police officers to the fire department and to other suburban departments. From the Wu administration there is concern that a big budget cut like the one backed by the City Council signals a hostility to police that is bad for morale and encourages more police officers to leave.
Taking money away from police has also become a highly charged political issue. As The New York Times reported, “Three years after ‘defund the police' became a rallying cry that emerged in the fury over the police killing of George Floyd, efforts to do away with conventional policing have largely fizzled in Minneapolis and beyond.” On her mayoral campaign website, Wu said that “safety should be built around restorative justice and community trust. From ending gun violence and domestic violence, to reforming our crisis response infrastructure, building wellness in our city means dismantling racism in our institutions and setting a new standard for accountability and community oversight.” That has not translated into a willingness to cut police funding. Last year, she rejected a City Council effort to cut $10 million from the police budget. So it’s no surprise she would find three times that amount to be unacceptable.
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Now the council has until the end of the month to override Wu’s veto with a two-thirds vote or let her budget stand. The conversation about needed police reform can start anytime.
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us on Twitter at @GlobeOpinion.
