Speaker after speaker had one simple message for the D.C. Council today: defund the Metropolitan Police Department.

Fueled by almost three weeks of nationwide protests that have raised concerns over police violence and racial inequality, almost all of the 90 residents and activists who testified to the Council’s judiciary committee on Monday afternoon asked lawmakers to not only reject Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposed 3.3% budget increase for the police department, but also redirect resources to other services and consider fully abolishing the police department.

“When schools perform poorly, they face drastic cuts. MPD, on the other hand, not so much,” said Tamika Spellman, a policy associate with HIPS, an organization that works on harm-reduction policies for drug users and sex workers.

“The $580 million check Mayor Bowser wants to cut MPD must instead provide for the people of D.C., particularly the black and brown communities who are regularly abused by the police department,” said Ward 1 resident Hayley Harmon. “How many years of violence interruptor programs could we fund with just a portion of MPD’s annual budget? How many people could we feed and house? How much medical and mental health and social work support could we provide for people in our city?”

The raw emotions and energy that have been on display on American streets since early June were echoed during the six-hour-long hearing, which was conducted virtually because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. And the heightened interest in the subject matter was evident by the more than 500 people who signed up to testify, only 90 of whom were accommodated because of time constraints. At the same police budget hearing last year, only 22 people spoke. (The committee said it also has received more than 15,000 written, video and phone submissions from the public.)

Speakers focused not only on the police budget, but also took aim at the nature of policing itself, calling officers agents of violence and enforcers of white supremacy.

“The truth is the D.C. city government is responsible for the same racist police terror that killed George Floyd and so many others. So if the government wants to say black lives matter, it has to put its money where its mouth is,” said Sean Blackmon, an organizer with the Stop Police Terror Project D.C.

“You embolden and encourage [MPD] with an ever-increasing budget and lack of accountability,” said  Naïké Savain, an attorney in D.C.

“How many times do we have to see insured property or dogs treated better than black and brown residents?”

“Additional police, or any police at all, will not enhance public safety. We must reprioritize where we put our money,” added Camara Stokes Hudson, who graduated from D.C. public schools and is now attending law school at New York University.

Bowser herself was a target of some of the testimony, accused of “performative activism” by having “Black Lives Matter” painted along a two-block stretch of 16th Street NW while at the same time not taking any steps to defund the police. (Activists added a message about defunding police to the the streetscape shortly thereafter.) Joseph Van Wye, a Ward 1 resident, challenged Bowser and the Council to “put our money where your mural is.”

For her part, Bowser has defended her proposed police budget, telling NPR last week that “my budget doesn’t fund it a penny more than we need and certainly not a penny less.” She has also said that while MPD’s budget has grown by 12% since 2015, the budget for the Department of Behavioral Health grew by 15%, D.C. Public Schools by 40%, the Department of Housing and Community Development by 61%, and the Department of Human Services by 75%.

And that message was supported by a small number of people speaking at Monday’s hearing, including Will Leibner. “You have the duty to keep our citizenry safe, and we need high quality policing to do that,” he said. “The idea of removing funding from MPD is akin to taking hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. It sounds like an easy fix, but it doesn’t solve the core issue of systemic racial
injustice and instead will cause lethal side effects, only further increasing violent crime.”

Kathy Henderson, a former ANC commissioner in Ward 5, said police are needed — and that policing can be reformed for the better. She cited a shooting late last week in Trinidad, a neighborhood that has seen crime spikes in the past and is also the site of one of the city’s violence interruption programs.

“If you think we don’t need the police, you need to take a look at that video of the shooting in broad daylight over on Simms Place, where one of the individuals pulled out an AK-47. Do you think that unarmed police are able to deal with those individuals that are clearly undermining black lives? So if black lives matter, we need to make sure that we provide policing equally, equitably, safely in all of our communities all across the city,” she said.

D.C. Police Union Chairman Gregg Pemberton, who in recent weeks has spoken out against cutting MPD’s funding, largely avoided the issue during the hearing, focusing on what he said were problematic provisions of an emergency police reform bill passed by the Council last week. He warned the bill would drive officers out of the department.

“Without adequate manpower… we’re ineffective and we will embolden those who want to victimize our citizens,” said Pemberton.

But the ground may well be shifting on how big MPD needs to be. Just a few years ago, most elected officials acted to stem a tide of officer retirements and pledged to rebuild the department to 4,000 officers. (It’s currently at just under 3,900.) Speaking on Monday, Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh questioned the need for that many.

“I don’t see the need for the 4,000 officers,” she said. “That should have to be justified. If we have fewer officers, we have amounts of money that should be put into violence prevention and other needs.”

For his part, Police Chief Peter Newsham has said he opposes any moves to trim MPD’s budget. But he also may have alienated some lawmakers over the weekend, when he told rank-and-file officers in a video message that the Council had “completely abandoned” them when it passed its emergency reform bill. That prompted a rebuke from At-Large Councilmember Robert White on Monday.

“To so thoroughly miss the importance and necessity of this moment that you use it to divide and get defensive is frightening and sad,” he said.

Additional reporting by Jenny Gathright.