In response to persistent police brutality, highlighted most recently by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, San Francisco mayor London Breed announced an effort to funnel funding away from the city’s police department and toward the black community, which experiences poverty at three times the average rate.
“Decades of disinvestment and racially disparate policies have disproportionately hurt our African-American community in SF,” Breed said on Twitter when announcing the joint effort with Supervisor Shamann Walton. “This week has highlighted the devastating impacts of police violence against African-Americans in this country.”
Mayor Breed and Walton, whose district encompasses the majority of the city’s African-American population, will lead a collaborative process with the community in partnership with the San Francisco Human Rights Commission to “help identify and prioritize funding needs.”
The specific dollar amounts and resources, unknown at this time, will be included in the mayor’s proposed two-year budget, which will be submitted to the Board of Supervisors by August 1, said a spokesperson for the mayor.
The San Francisco Police Department’s 2018–19 budget came to $611,701,869, the bulk of which went to police salaries ($394.7 million), followed by fringe benefits ($52.2 million) and “professional services” ($744,000).
Residents who wish to participate in open meetings on reinvestment in the African-American community should contact the Human Rights Commission for an invitation.
According to the mayor’s office, in San Francisco, one of the wealthiest cities in the U.S., the average income for a black household is $31,000, a fraction compared to the average $110,000 for white families.
“As many as 19 percent of African-American children in San Francisco live in poverty,” she said. “Black and African-American individuals comprise 35 percent of the city’s unhoused population, despite making up only 5 percent of the population as a whole.”
Most of the city’s black population lives within the southeastern neighborhoods of Bayview–Hunters Point and Visitacion Valley, as well as in the Fillmore District, in the northeast, whose African-American residents fell victim to the city’s racist redlining practice decades prior.
“This is a concrete, bold, and immediate step towards true reparations for black people,” Walton tweeted following the announcement.
This week alone saw numerous instances of police violence erupt at demonstrations across the country, including this one in Buffalo, New York; this one in Indianapolis; this one in Brooklyn; and this one, and this one, and this one.
San Francisco had its own share of protests this week, like a youth-led demonstration in the Mission District, which saw up to 10,000 attendees, wherein SFPD arrested 23 people, including a journalist. The unrest caused local politicians to spar over social media about police-union donations; Senator Scott Wiener, while arguing with opponent Jackie Fielder, said he will donate all contributions to his reelection campaign from law-enforcement unions to area nonprofits “serving at-risk youth of color.”
According to S.F. officials, the city currently faces a budget deficit of $1.1 billion to $1.7 billion over the next two fiscal years owing to effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
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