February 22, 2021
While cities like Baltimore and Denver cut police budgets by 3% or 10%, Austin cut its by a third $150 million.
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Over the summer, chants to “defund the police” rang out across the country. But hardly anyone cut their police budget by as much Austin, Texas. While cities like Baltimore and Denver cut their budgets by 3% or 10%, Austin cut APD s budget by a third $150 million.
And they ve already started spending that money on other programs buying two hotels with plans to convert them into permanent supportive housing for the homeless. The Black Lives Matter movement really ascended in our cities, it created an opportunity for us to move the dollars that so often are used to police homelessness to throw people in jail for a night and then to send them back onto the streets to take those same dollars, and use them to actually operate the hotels, Austin city council member Greg Casar said.