Tim Steller's opinion: Broad arguments don't justify defunding Tucson police — yet

Up until the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the most common complaint people made about Tucson police was that it took too long for them to respond to 911 calls.

Then Tuesday night came, and the “Defund the Police” campaign made its local debut.

One after another, the 25 or so people who commented on the city budget all had a version of the same complaint, sometimes using the same words, and it wasn’t about response times. They said Tucson police get too much of the city’s money, and some of their budget should be diverted to services for residents, services that might help prevent crime.

They also said that this is what “black and brown communities” in Tucson want, although many of the speakers acknowledged they themselves are white, and it was unclear if any of them were people of color.

“We have the luxury as white people of equating the police with safety, but that’s simply not the case for black and brown communities,” said a speaker who identified himself as Connor Kingston.

Another speaker said diverted money “should go to departments that serve black Tucsonans,” as if black Tucsonans don’t also use parks and roads and call the police.

The many white speakers who said the police budget should be cut on behalf of communities of color probably were speaking out of what people call “allyship” these days — supporting the apparent demands of black and brown people.

But another way to look at it would be presumptuousness. Who are they to speak for entire communities they don’t belong to, communities that have broad diversity of opinion within them?

Their comments also ignored the fact that Tucson police have been undergoing a de facto defunding for years. The department has shrunk from around 1,200 officers in the early 2000s to around 850 now.

At the same time, the Tucson Police Department is the only big department in the country to voluntarily adopt all eight progressive reforms advocated by the “8 Can’t Wait” program, as Chief Chris Magnus noted during a presentation Tuesday afternoon.

Those include mandatory de-escalation, banning chokeholds and strangleholds, and requiring warnings and exhausting alternatives before shooting.

Still, we do spend a lot on police: In this tentative budget, the approval of which was delayed till June 30, police would receive about $164 million of the city’s $526.5 million in general-fund spending — about 31%.

I talked to a variety of City Council members and others Wednesday after the marathon sessions Tuesday that dealt twice with police issues.

Many questioned this same presumption and doubted how representative the organized speakers were of the city as a whole.

Council member Nikki Lee, newly elected from the southeast side’s Ward 4, told me that when she ran for office, the main complaint she heard about police was that they respond too slowly to 911 calls. She said she’s open to the speakers’ ideas but wants to be sure “the allies of the black community are not stepping in front of them.”

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“My husband, who is a black man here in Tucson, has had nothing but positive interactions with TPD after more than 20 years living here,” she said. She added, “My family doesn’t speak for the entire black community in any way shape or form.”

I wish the speakers Tuesday night had acknowledged that.

Council member Richard Fimbres, who represents the south side’s Ward 5, told me it felt like some people were viewing the Tucson Police Department through the lens of other departments that have committed “atrocities.”

“We’re not perfect, but I tell you those officers are doing a good job,” said Fimbres, who for 32 years was a Pima County Sheriff’s Department deputy.

Council member Steve Kozachik, who represents midtown’s Ward 6, felt similarly that those advocating for defunding police were painting with too broad a brush.

“For every one person last night who was saying defund police, I can give you 10 people who are worried about response time, and another 10 people who are happy with the community policing,” he said. “It’s a legitimate conversation, but to frame it so that you have to defund the police is not a direction we should be going.”

Mayor Regina Romero was more open to the idea of shifting funding away from the police.

“We have been expanding the role of police departments for many generations,” Romero said. “So much so that police departments are the front line to help homeless people, to deal with mental health crises.”

Citing programs like Kidco, Romero said, “The more we invest in communities of color, the less we have to invest in police departments.”

I’ll acknowledge there is some logic to this broader concept — that judicious spending in other areas could reduce the need for spending on police.

But if we go that route, we have to also perform the magic trick of reducing police response times and maintaining quality investigations while spending less.

It’s not impossible, but it would be a tough trick to pull off and might mean sacrificing some of the key reforms the department has spent money on, like the mental health unit, the de-escalation training and other features of progressive policing.

“In a scenario of a 10 or 15% cut, we’re answering the 911 call and that’s it,” said Sgt. Jason Winsky, spokesman for the Tucson Police Officers Association, who founded the department’s mental-health unit.

Maybe that’s what Tucsonans want, but if we’re going to start cutting, it will take a careful analysis of how our police operate, what we want them to stop doing and what we want to invest in instead.

We can’t rely on sweeping claims of what black and brown communities really want and need.