How to Cope with Your Local Police Department Being Defunded After It Was Never Defunded

There’s no doubt we’re living in dangerous times. And why? Pandemic? Putin? Unprecedented corporate profiteering? All of those are minor compared to the real cause, at least here in Seattle: The drastic defunding of our local police department after it was never defunded at all.

While our local city council is doing nothing to reverse the defunding of the Seattle Police Department that never happened, here are some ways to cope:

1. Find community on NextDoor and Safe Seattle message boards: There’s going to be a lot of mean people in this city with “facts” who tell you, “Actually, after all those Black Lives Matter protests and pleas for better police accountability, the police department was not only never defunded but it was also given resources to hire 237 officers in 2022.” Ignore them and dive into the safety and validation of an online community who thinks that never happened too.
2. Redefine “defunding”: Just because the city council never literally defunded Seattle Police Department operations – not even a little bit – doesn’t mean it hasn’t been defunded. Defunding can mean anything. Did some officers have less time for coffee and donuts in the breakroom when their colleagues quit due to their refusal to get vaccinated, their attendance at the Jan. 6 insurrection, or experiencing a protester look at them in disgust? That means the snack budget went down – and that counts as defunding! Whatever you do, though, don’t use this same logic to say quitting police officers ironically kinda “defunded” themselves.
3. While we’re at it, let’s redefine “dangerous”: Crime stats that prove Seattle is still one of the safest cities in the country doesn’t tell the whole story because it doesn’t include the number of tents you see every day in this city, home to one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world. Sure, the number of homicides went down in Seattle last year and the crime rate overall is historically lower than it’s been in past decades, but the numbers of tents—aka danger—went up. And what’s more dangerous than staring directly at the cruel realities of our local and national economy? If left unchecked, seeing homeless people exist could lead to the city taking an affordable housing plan seriously or—even more terrifying—a state income tax that would keep Washington from being the most tax-regressive state in the nation.  
4. Ask for more police funding: It doesn’t matter if the police department was literally defunded. What matters is it feels like it was defunded after police purposely avoided old-fashioned community policing in immigrant neighborhoods like Little Saigon for years. The only way to solve this problem is to pay them more money. Don’t worry – it’s not like a never-ending cycle of extortion or paying protection money to a Mafia at all.
5. Get unbiased information from the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild: Follow SPOG’s social media accounts as they publicize how horrible the city’s gotten on their watch after never being defunded. Take comfort their new catchphrase every time they post about a new violent crime in the city “Feel safer yet?”

While you may never be able to single-handedly reverse the defunding of police who were never defunded, remember: You always have the power to report every firework, car backfiring or heavy thing dropped at night as a homeless person firing a gun on Nextdoor.