soooo I've spent the past 3 days combing through the @bostonpolice budget for @ACLU_Mass and FOLKS.
The MONEY. IS. WILD.
just published a blog & report on this (below), but I need to put the worst parts of this publicly on blast. Strap in. (1/10)
#DefundPolice #mapoli #bospoli
At $414 mil, @bostonpolice is the 2nd largest line item in the whole city budget. That means:
- 7x larger than the Cabinet of Health & Human Services (inc 9 depts)
- 4x larger than the Public Health Commission @HealthyBoston
- 182x larger than the Office of Arts & Culture (2/10)
Within their monumental $414 million budget, they are somehow reducing funding for personnel in the professional development & standards bureaus (which includes their Anti-Corruption Division!!!), while increasing personnel in the field (= more #boscops) (3/10)
and the PAYCHECKS.
In 2019, 530 - that's five 👏🏽 hundred 👏🏽 and 👏🏽 thirty 👏🏽 - #boscops were paid more than Boston mayor @marty_walsh. And Walsh makes $199k.
Yearly, BPD employees on average make $58,000 more than non-BPD Boston employees. (4/10)
these inflated paychecks aren't coming from higher base salaries, but from truly out-of-control use of overtime hours.
The 20 highest-earning @bostonpolice employees alone took home $1,971,778 in overtime pay in 2019.
and yes, this chart names names. $300k, really!?! (5/10)
.@bostonpolice estimates its employees will use over 1.2 million hours of overtime in 2020. This equals:
- 23,500 overtime hours BPD-wide per week
- 420 overtime hours (2.5 months) per BPD employee per year
- the equivalent of hiring over 570 new full-time employees (6/10)
and of c overtime doesn't come cheap. 15% of the entire BPD budget - $60.8 million - is for overtime pay. For reference, that's:
- 3x larger than the Cabinet of Operations (inc 3 depts)
- 11x larger than the Mayor’s Office
- 240x larger than the Human Rights Commission (7/10)
Enraged??? Here are 4 ways to act:
1) Call and email @BOSCityCouncil councilors and Mayor @marty_walsh
2) TESTIFY via email, video, or Zoom at the budget hearing on Tuesday, June 9 (I will!)
(8/10)
3) Follow the amazing guidelines laid out by the @MuslimJustice toolkit: bit.ly/DefundBosCops
4) Tell MA legislators to divest from police and invest in communities
action.aclu.org/send-message/t…
(9/10)
Major props to @MuslimJustice and @justicehealing for leading the wave, organizing, & shaping the narrative on this. ✊🏽
The full blog post is at data.aclum.org/2020/06/05/unp…
And the report is at data.aclum.org/wp-content/upl…
(10/10) </rant>
(11/10) ADDENDUM: I realized this morning there's a mistake with that top 20 earnings figure. I had the "regular" and "other" pay bars switched, ugh. 🤦🏽♀️😫 Why did ggplot gotta do me like that?? I should've caught it.
Here is the corrected figure (just updated blog & report):
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