The city council of Los Angeles accesses to the claims of many activists after the demonstrations, anti-racism triggered by the death of George Floyd, at the end of may. The elected officials have voted, Wednesday 1st July, a reduction of approximately $ 150 million to the budget of the police.
The measure was adopted by twelve votes to two, and the money thus saved will go in large part to investment in disadvantaged areas and ethnic minorities. "This is a step forward, which will support the inhabitants belonging to minorities and give them the respect, the dignity and the equality of opportunity they deserve," said Curren Price, only elected black to serve on the budget committee of the municipality.
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Los Angeles in the footsteps of New York
With this budget, the staff of the Los Angeles police department, a city of four million people, will thus be brought down below 10, 000 by next summer, their lowest level since 2008, reports the Los Angeles Times. In total, the budget allocated to the Los Angeles police department amounted to approximately 1.86 billion dollars prior to this reduction, on the total budget of the city of some 10.5 billion. This budget cut meets the requirements of the reforms of the manifestations of racism are being made by the movement #BlackLivesMatter that followed the death of George Floyd, a black man asphyxiated by a white policeman in Minneapolis on may 25.
"I want to commend the organizers of Black Lives Matter in Los Angeles and the other for having maintained the pressure and asked for more of our institutions," said Curren Price, believing that this reform "would not finish without their efforts." Throughout the country, requests for transfer of funds allocated to the municipal police for the benefit of disadvantaged minorities has been a claim flagship of the protesters. The city of New York, the first american metropolis, does it also trim the budget allocated to its 36 000 agents, reducing it by more than a billion dollars.
