The aftermath of the George Floyd killings, paired with outrage over past police brutality cases in Milwaukee and across the country, has led to many people in and out of government calling for greater accountability, restructuring, defunding and even the abolishment of police departments including Milwaukee’s.
That’s not such an easy task, particularly with the cuts the Milwaukee Police Department has already faced in recent months, Police Chief Alfonso Morales tells WTMJ.
“The Milwaukee Police Department has already experienced some defunding. We lost almost $10 million in the 2020 budget. That means the loss of 60 police officers,” Chief Morales told WTMJ’s John Mercure on Monday.
He also said the budget cut meant cutbacks in “extremely crucial” areas.
“We’ve already cut back on some of our divisions, like the Sensitive Crime Division,” he said.
“We have no more third shift there. That division investigates crimes against children, familial incidents, child neglect and sexual assault-type investigations.”
If MPD would have further budget cuts, the city would need to have other programs handle particular areas of social services which police would handle, according to the Chief.
“Usually when you want to defund or you want to bring back some of the money you put in law enforcement, you have to have other areas to address other issues like mental health, drug addiction with overdose, sex trafficking, domestic violence,” he said.
“The social services have to have to have an impact on addressing that. If not, it becomes a police issue.”
Those items have already become a police issue, according to Morales.
“We’ve had 15 homicides in four separate incidents,” he said.
“15 people dying as a result of mental health, drugs and family violence. When you say you’re cutting back, who’s going to take on those challenges? You can have that, but are we prepared to do that?”
