Hundreds of people came out to show their support for the Seattle Police Department the day before the city council is set to drastically cutting the budget for the department. A handful of protesters wanting the cuts also showed up but they were greatly outnumbered.
Several people at the rally explained why they were there supporting the police:
“First of all, I’m a patriot of this country,” said Patrick Gunn, explaining why he drove from Woodinville to the rally. “I’m a Marine. And I believe that our rights are being trampled on here in Seattle. And the responsibility for our mayor and our governor is absolutely intolerable.”
Nearby stood Victoria Beach of Seattle.
“I am an African-American woman, and some of the other people down here at the rally, (I) don’t have the same thought or agenda as them,” said Beach. “But I just want to defend our chief and our Black law enforcement. I don’t want to have an all-white police department, and that’s what we’re going to get.”
“And defunding the police is not the answer,” said Gauri Doshetty of Redmond. “We need proper reform. Defunding is not it.”
Former Seattle Supersonic and political candidate James Donaldson said, “We’ve got to send a message to this crazy Seattle City Council of ours, that they are out of their freakin’ minds to think about defunding police.”
Mike Solan, president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), says this shows how many people support them and not the City Council.
“The reasonable community, the ignored majority who have never been heard in this city lately due to the unreasonable activism by our elected officials,” said Solan. “They needed to be heard.”
He says what he saw Sunday makes him believe the Seattle City Council will be swayed, that they will back off their plan to defund SPD.
The city council voted 7-1 to cut funding for the plolice which will cost the city 100 police officers. The one vote against the cuts was only because she thought the funding should have been cut by a lot more.