The Democratic leadership of the city of Seattle is planning to abolish its entire criminal justice system, including police, prisons and municipal courts, according to leaked documents.
The supposed plan by Seattle's Democratic City Council was apparently detailed in several documents leaked from the King County Executive’s Office in Seattle to reporter Christopher Rufo. The papers apparently slam America's criminal justice system, arguing that it is a “white supremacist institution” that needs to be dismantled.
The supposed plan comes after city officials announced their support for cutting the Seattle Police Department's (SPD) budget by 50 percent.
Leaked documents claim that the criminal justice system is racist
Rufo, who serves as the editor for City Journal and director of the Discovery Institute's Center on Wealth and Poverty, talked about the supposed leak with radio host Glenn Beck on Monday.
Talking to Beck, he revealed how Seattle city leaders supposedly plan to abolish foundational institutions responsible for catching and prosecuting crime, including police departments, prisons and even court systems.
“This is a document that comes from the King County's executive office, and it really provides the theoretical basis for the executive's plan to completely and permanently shut down the largest jail, with no plans to replace it,” Rufo pointed out to Beck.
Rufo then went on to explain how the document presented “a kind of chart and a pyramid” showing that the things that form the foundation of not just Seattle, but America's criminal justice system “is white racism, white supremacy, white fragility, and a whole lot of other theories with the kind of the buzzwords that have been circulating lately.”
He goes on about how the leaked documents claim that crimes committed by people of color are not the fault of the criminal, but of society or, more specifically, white society.
“The logic is, well, if you have a racist society, that in essence forces people, especially people of color, to commit crimes,” he explained.
“I mean, it's absurd! It doesn't work in practice at all,” he continued.
Police department already defunded
Even without the supposed plan to abolish the city's criminal justice system, the SPD is already facing problems as the city council moves to defund it. (Related: Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan proposes SLASHING the Seattle Police Department's budget by $20 million – tells police to expect deeper cuts in the future.)
On July 8, a majority of the Seattle City Council expressed support for a proposal that would cut the SPD's budget in half by 2021. This was followed by multiple council members stating in a budget meeting on July 15 that they would also support a 50 percent cut to the department's remaining budget for this year.
In response, SPD chief Carmen Best has stated that what the council wants is impossible and that there isn't enough time to implement the changes needed to make the budget cuts work.
“I want to make sure we have the right staffing model that we're able to continue providing public safety to the community that we serve,” Best said in an interview with NPR.
“I think that the impact would be absolutely detrimental not only for the police department but for the community that we serve,” she explained further. “At this point, we are working really hard to make sure that we can maintain adequate levels of staffing and adequate levels of service and cutting, just lopping off 50% of our officers, I would think at this time would be a reckless maneuver and I'm hoping that people will calm down and look at ways that we can have a real plan in place of how we might transfer some of the responsibilities and services to other areas.”
The city had already been reforming the police department as part of a federal consent decree Seattle entered into eight years ago following a Department of Justice investigation into their use of force.
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