Barrett Cuts 60 Milwaukee Police Positions [EDITORIAL]

Recently, the mayor of Milwaukee, Tom Barrett, announced his 2020 budget proposal. This proposal, which has been approved by council, included cutting 60 police officers from the city’s police departments across the city. You would think they would be able to come up with another way to free up some money, especially in a crime ridden city like Milwaukee. 

There has to be another way they can go about this. The questions is how. In a perfect world all 60 positions should be restored, but Milwaukee may have to settle for 30. In a unanimous decision we have decided that 30 may be the best option we have at this point. 30 is much better than not restoring any, even though 60 is practically needed in a city like Milwaukee. Unfortunately, over the years, crime has steadily increased in Milwaukee. With 60 positions, cut imagine how drastically that number could grow. Statistically, the violent crime rate has went up between ’86 and ’14. This includes murder, legacy rape, revised rape, robbery rate, and aggravated assault. Clearly now is the time to keep as many officers as we can. 

We believe that Barrett likely chose to cut funding from the police department because it may have been the easiest, physically, to do. It also could have been a last resort option. Unfortunately, we need as many cops in Milwaukee as possible. It is super mind boggling to try to grasp the concept of the mayor actually wanting to cut funding from the police department. 

We have decided that AT LEAST 30 police officers must be restored to the city of Milwaukee under the Murphy’s Compromise. The city will have to figure out an entirely new way to create additional funding if necessary. For example, in the worst case scenario the city could raise sales taxes. This may have a lot of controversy, but we believe that safety is more important. With losing 60 officers, response time will go up, and criminals could feel like they have an advantage now and won’t get caught. The city could pitch it like that. If it was either jeopardizing safety or raising taxes by a small portion, what would you do? 

In general, there really can never be enough police funding no matter what, especially in Milwaukee. Public safety should come first. 

This editorial was written based on the discussion of a JAMS 504 editorial board.