Thank you to everyone who attending the April 4 city council meeting and wrote to the city council in support of community safety outside of more money for police. My comments are here, where you will also find a link to the full budget discussion.

Original post below:

Iowa City is facing the worst financial headwinds in a decade. Yet, we need resilience and flexibility to face what’s ahead.

• We have a new Strategic Plan that gives a compelling vision of our shared future.

• The future requires collaboration, shared power, and accountability.

• Iowa City has a responsibility to provide community safety, which shouldn’t be defined by law enforcement.

• Meeting people’s needs and strengthening neighborhoods increases safety.

• The proposed City of Iowa City budget increases spending on police by nearly a million dollars.

• Policing is expensive, and rooted in a history of violence that disproportionately impacts communities of color.

I will not vote to increase police funding.

Instead, let’s invest in preventing harm and supporting the work of organizations who know how to empower people.

The Iowa City council will hold a public hearing on the proposed budget on Tuesday, April 4, at our 6:00pm meeting. (Note this is an updated meeting date!)

My colleagues and I need to hear how you want us to invest in community safety. 

Please comment at the meeting, send comments to council@iowa-city.org, or contact individual councilors.

Public safety is central to local government. Cities all over the US, including Iowa City, invest heavily in public safety, with police and fire department expenditures hovering around 40% of our annual general fund budget. We must look critically at this investment, and make sure our public dollars are delivering the safety we expect. We should question our expectations for police to handle all kinds of emergencies.

I am asking my city council colleagues to shift some resources into other ways of building community safety.

In our recent Strategic Plan, Iowa City identified our values, which must be central to our efforts to recover from the pandemic and to build resilience for the future. Every action and policy should reflect these values: racial equity, social justice, and human rights; climate action; and partnerships and engagement. Iowa City will approve its annual budget this Spring, with spending on police proposed at $17.3 million for one year. By comparison, our general fund support of affordable housing is $1 million per year.

In this tight budget year, I propose holding police staffing where it is today, and shifting those funds to programs and services that prevent, in the first place, problems we currently rely on police to solve.

What is safety?

“Safety” is individual and communal. It means the security of our bodies and our homes, as well as wider social patterns of support and non-violence. It means privacy when we want it, but also belonging to groups where we feel welcomed and valued.

Safety requires stable housing, food, clean water, access to jobs and education, physical and mental health, freedom of movement, and opportunities for entertainment and enrichment.

Traditionally, the term “public safety” is limited to local law enforcement and emergency response. Whenever police are involved, the “safety” response includes carrying lethal weapons and the ability to detain people and seize property. 

Public safety has also changed over time. In the 1960s and 1970s, paramedics were rare. In many cities, police were tasked with transporting injured people to hospitals for medical treatment. People realized that sending a badge and gun to a medical emergency was not the best fit. It’s important to remember that only more recently have we been able to triage emergency calls, to dispatch the best-suited responder for the job.

Beyond emergency response, when we think of government safety nets, what comes to mind? Perhaps programs like Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, or public housing? Despite the fundamental political divide surrounding these entitlements, they are recognized as legitimate and important government functions. That is, as a society we generally agree that supporting the necessary components of safety is a central government role.

What do we invest in safety now?

In Iowa City, about 40% of the general fund budget, and 12-15% of all budgetary fund expenditures outside of capital projects, is allocated to just police and fire departments. By comparison, public works in Iowa City, which includes the critical government services of water, sewer, stormwater, refuse/recycling/landfill, streets, and engineering, is proposed at less than 19% of total budgetary expenditures.

Departmental budgets for parks and recreation (think: rec centers, pools, trails, trees, parks, playgrounds, and recreation programming), library, and senior center, added together, in FY2022 received under 11% of all non-capital funds.

City support of nonprofits like CommUnity Crisis Services, Shelter House, United Action for Youth, and Iowa City Free Medical/Dental Clinic, who all provide key community safety services, have increased sharply in the last few years–with recent aggressive funding from American Rescue Plan Act dollars. However, City grants to support these services still rely primarily on federal dollars. The annual “Aid to Agencies” budget was less than .4% of total budgetary spending, coming in under $700,000, for fiscal year 2022.

Restructuring the Iowa City Police

In Summer 2020, after ICPD and other agencies tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed young people protesting police violence, the city council resolved to create a plan for restructuring the police. This plan was released in December 2020, and later approved by council. The plan outlines the continuum of crisis response, beginning with crisis prevention, then diversion to non-police response, then co-response of police and care workers, and, finally, police response. 

Iowa City has made some progress in this plan, such as increasing funding of mental health first-responders, more support for unhoused Iowa Citians, use of the GuideLink Center, and revisions to a variety of police policies, like adding the duty to intervene if an officer sees another officer violating policy.

Before this plan, Iowa City had implemented many policing reforms called for around the country in recent years. There are no “student resource officers,” or police stationed in our schools. We have had civilian oversight for decades. Our officers are nationwide leaders in training police for crisis intervention and de-escalation. We don’t allow choke-holds. Our officers will publicly acknowledge that their presence can itself escalate tensions. We don’t engage in high-speed vehicle chases. We avoid “dynamic entry,” or no-knock  warrants. Our chief understands that use of a military vehicle in our neighborhoods can be traumatizing. 

I applaud these commitments to policing with care and minimized violence. However, to align with the values and vision in our Strategic Plan, we must focus more on prevention and diversion and not on increasing police response. 

No matter how well-trained and caring a police officer may be, the fact remains that all officers brings three things to their 65,000+ yearly interactions with the public:

1. Lethal force in the form of a firearm;

2. Broad authority to seize people and property; and

3. Legal immunity if someone is harmed. 

Even the Best Police Are Police

When I advocate for fewer police, I have also heard the concern that if police only show up to arrest or enforce, they will be seen as “bad guys.” What is missing from this concern is that the system empowers and positions police to be enforcers even in the most positive or mundane moments. For many people, positive interactions will never be enough to undo the fear that comes from the police’s inherent power to destroy lives and livelihoods.

My recent experiences inform this. In December 2022, I was in a car accident. I was hit by someone who failed to yield at an intersection. My car was totaled, but no one was injured. The driver of the other car spoke very limited English, and I did not speak either of the languages in which he was fluent. As we tried to communicate, at one point he got down on his knees in the middle of the road, clasped his hands and pleaded: “No police, no police!” (A neighbor who had witnessed the accident had already called the police.) I don’t know why this driver had such fear, but he was a young, Black, immigrant.

The officer who responded was efficient and professional. He was patient and reasonable. He did his job. (For which he is well-compensated, with base pay over $78,000, plus overtime, health insurance and disability insurance, paid time off, and a generous pension.) His job included arriving in a police car, and carrying a gun. His job also meant citing the other driver with a ticket for over $250 for “failure to yield,” regardless of whether I wanted that outcome.

No matter how gentle our officers, the fact that the government response was “police,” in this case, meant the other driver was terrified. He is not alone. 

Our country has shared in the outrage against certain heinous acts carried out by those sworn to protect. But aside from those horrific examples that may come to mind, there are troubling national trends in policing.

Since 2020, despite all the promises of police reform in response to widespread acknowledgment of flaws in policing, American deaths at the hands of police have increased, with 2022 being the deadliest year ever. About 1,200 people were killed by police in 2022 in the US. (For comparison, officers are killed by criminal subjects on the job very, very rarely, with 73 such deaths reported nationwide in 2021. Considering overall on-the-job death and injury rates, many local government jobs are more dangerous than policing, including transit operators, refuse/recycling collectors, parks maintenance staff, and many public works positions.)

Even if there is more agreement now than ever that status quo policing allows these tragedies to compound, police spending continues to increase around the country. Iowa City is no exception.

The Police Budget

To understand the scope of the proposed annual police budget of $17.3 million, consider the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). This national COVID-relief legislation injected once-in-a-generation funding into state and local governments. The Iowa City city council and staff have been working on plans on how best to use these funds since Spring 2021. ARPA is supposed to transform our community. The promise of ARPA is long-term improvements in community resilience and wellbeing, not just pandemic recovery.

How much ARPA money did Iowa City receive, to enable transformative, generational change? $18.3 million, or less than 6% more than just one year of the police budget.

In FY2014, the city council approved a police budget of $12,246,285. In ten years, the police department budget has grown 41.65%. During that same period, Iowa City’s population grew by only 10.26%. The police budget grew more over those years than any other department except the city council and the city manager. Police funding during this time outpaced growth in public works, neighborhood and community services, library, and parks and recreation, to name just a few. The police budget also grew much faster than the general fund overall.

While police funding grew by over 40% in the past 10 years, those dollars aren’t necessarily reflected in a rise in our department’s emergency response in the community. One measure of demand for police, calls for service, has decreased over the last five years for which we have published full-year data (2017-2021). Over these years, Iowa City police have responded to an average of 68,956 calls for service. In 2021, response was up from the pandemic-low of 61,655 calls in 2020, but still over 4,000 calls below the five-year average.

Calls for service is just one metric, and it’s important to know that, in Iowa City, about 45% of all calls for service are initiated by officers themselves. This means nearly half of all response is not due to someone calling for help. Officers driving around on patrol, in the course of investigating crimes, or following up on prior calls create nearly half of police interactions with the public. Given this proportion, it is understandable the department would request more money for field operations, to support this self-imposed level of calls. Nevertheless, we set the service level. We can reduce officer-initiated calls, especially at the time we are dispatching non-police response.

In my policy role, I am generally reluctant to suggest operational changes, as I am not the expert in our operations. However, in addition to national data that supports prevention over punishment, my own experiences in Iowa City inform my request to reduce police field operations. While I was on a ride-along with a police sergeant one late weekend night, outside of Summit on Clinton Street, a bar patron was upset because someone had snapped his (fake) ID in half. Police were called by bar security, and the man was escorted outside by officers. He was yelling and posturing, but not shoving or swinging punches. Once outside, five squad cars and ten officers–from cars and downtown foot patrol, both ICPD and University of Iowa Police–converged on the scene. There were ten armed officers in response to one frustrated, drunk young man.

The response I witnessed that night downtown was disproportionate, and it is also very expensive. Police officers are among the highest-paid municipal employees.   

Yet, our department is like many around the country that are having trouble recruiting and retaining officers. In Iowa City, this has meant numerous unfilled positions. Without reductions in basic service levels, fewer officers means more hours on the street per officer, which means more overtime. Overtime means 50% more straight labor costs to the City. And, not only are officers on overtime more costly for the taxpayer, overworked people are more likely to make mistakes, and mistakes by police can be tragic. We should do everything we can to prevent injury and death at the hands of City employees.

In discussing reduction of police with other city leaders in recent months, the concern that less experienced and more overworked police are more likely to make mistakes has come up repeatedly. If we have a growing concern that one of our public servants will kill one of our residents, for me that only increases the urgency with which we must create a system in which armed response is not the default.

My experience living in the South District further informs my budget proposal. I am confident that I see more police cars in my neighborhood, on a day-to-day basis, than most of my city council colleagues. Statistics show my neighborhood does not have more crime than other neighborhoods, yet we have a higher police “service level.” I recently talked with a west-side resident who said he does not see police cars patrolling his neighborhood. Fewer police patrols would not change his feelings of safety in his home.

A common response to the suggestion of non-police response is: “What if something goes sideways?” Or, “What about a hostage situation?” However, even while traditional policing continues, we do not need to staff police departments at the level of worst-case-scenario response at all times. Our fire department, for example, does not staff at the level needed to respond to the worst kind of large structure fire. Rather, we have procedures for ramping up and bringing in assistance from other agencies in extreme situations. Shifting some community contacts to unarmed response would not tip our community into chaos.

Budget Pressures Beyond Our Control

In Iowa, cities have lost millions in revenue due to dramatic property tax reform that started in 2013. State law dictates how cities can raise and borrow funds. A growing community like Iowa City historically has the benefit of an expanding tax base, but proposed laws this year likely will leave Iowa City behind where it was a year ago in our revenue.

Most of the hit this year will be to our general fund, where, due to State-imposed limits on how cities can collect revenue, we will not be able to make up that money. In the currently proposed FY2024 budget, police spending is 25.59% of the general fund. At the same time, the general fund is the source of many of our initiatives that improve community wellbeing and thereby prevent crime. This fund supports parks and recreation programs, the Iowa City Senior Center, and parts of our neighborhood and development services department. Since general fund dollars are limited, every dollar towards policing is a dollar that cannot go towards community gardens, affordable housing, or kids’ swim lessons. Is that the investment choice we should make?

Iowa City police participate in a different pension system, the Municipal Fire and Police Retirement System of Iowa (MFPRSI), governed by Chapter 411 of the Iowa Code). This year, MFPRSI employees contribute 9.4% of their pay, while employers, like the City of Iowa City, contribute a whopping 23.9% (down from a high of 30.41% in 2015), for a total of 33.3% of gross pay. Employees are vested in MFPRSI after only four years of service, or at age 55. These public pensions also provide permanent disability benefits at 50-60% of the officer’s highest three-year-average pay. The legislature continues to push enhancements to the MFPRSI.

These facts about police pensions are not to say that public servants do not deserve generous pensions–all workers should have these opportunities! But we must be honest about the severely disproportionate investment in policing, with continually rising costs to our residents that are dictated by the State. Shifting towards other forms of community safety can empower our city to decide where best to spend our already restricted funds.

What Do We Get for Our Investment?

I have had a lot of conversations about policing in the last few years. Most residents greatly appreciate having robust emergency response. If something bad happens, they want to be able to call 911, and they want someone to arrive on scene quickly. That person should be well-equipped to help. If there’s a medical emergency, the responder should have the skills and equipment to assess and treat injuries. If there’s a fire, the responder must be capable of extinguishing the fire.

Locally, we have a unified emergency communications system, the Johnson County Emergency Communications Services Association (JECSA), which enables trained dispatchers to triage calls in real-time.

In the past, a 911 call in Iowa City resulted in dispatch of fire, police, and ambulance, regardless of the call type. Now, medical calls get a medical response, fire calls get a fire response, and, well, everything else gets a police response.

I have yet to hear from someone who wants violence or escalation in a crisis. Unfortunately, the institution of American policing is built on violence. This is not to say that Iowa City Police officers regularly inflict violence. They very, very rarely do. In fact, 99.6-99.7% of our calls for service do not involve any use of force. And, “use of force” is very broadly defined. It includes putting hands on someone to obtain compliance, in addition to using handcuffs or unholstering or using a taser or firearm, and many reported uses of force are for euthanizing sick or injured wildlife. Our officers follow policy in reporting any use of force, and those use of force reports are provided to the civilian Community Police Review Board.

Despite the low level of physical violence by our officers, police are the agents of devastating change in people’s lives. Charging a crime of any level sets off a chain of events that often results in reducing a person’s ability to find or keep a job, excel in school, or provide opportunities for their children’s success.

For example, take the “failure to yield” citation against the driver who ran into my car. If that ticket wasn’t paid, it would be referred to the county attorney for collection. Even worse, it could result in a criminal charge for failure to appear on the scheduled court date. Because of a language barrier or a lack of understanding of opaque, procedural rules, failure to appear can escalate, resulting in a warrant being issued for arrest. Warrants like these aren’t actively pursued, but an officer who pulls over someone with an outstanding warrant is likely to execute that warrant by taking the person into custody. 

The person who accidentally hit my car had a small child in his car. What happens if his citation was not paid, a warrant eventually issued, and he is stopped in the future while driving with his child? This can trigger DHS involvement, even removal of his child. A person of color is much more likely to have a bond imposed for release, so if that person lacks financial means (or procedural knowledge) to bond out, they are more likely to miss school or work, and be unable to provide childcare or care for their pets. 

After the initial harm of this interaction with the criminal legal system, a person with even a simple misdemeanor conviction is less likely to be able to land a job, rent a place to live, or borrow money.

While the past few years have helped shine a light on the worst instances of physical brutality by police around the country, the system of policing and the punitive criminal legal system destroys lives in ways well beyond immediate violence.

A Focus on Prevention and Accountability

Our high investment in what is just a small part of community safety–emergency response–speaks to the prioritization of reactive government support to those in need. Like other public health measures, there is good data that investment in prevention leads to better outcomes across the board. In fact, the American Public Health Association (APHA) explicitly supports these goals:

APHA recommends moving toward the abolition of carceral systems and building in their stead just and equitable structures that advance the public’s health by (both during and following the COVID-19 crisis) (1) urgently reducing the incarcerated population; (2) divesting from carceral systems and investing in the societal determinants of health (e.g., housing, employment); (3) committing to noncarceral measures for accountability, safety, and well-being; (4) restoring voting rights to formerly and currently incarcerated people; and (5) funding research to evaluate policy determinants of exposure to the carceral system and proposed alternatives.

Within the FY2024 police budget, there is an overall increase from FY2023 of more than $955,000. Despite Iowa City facing the worst financial headwinds in over a decade, prevention is not the aim of ICPD’s budget plan this year. In fact, the police budget line for “crime prevention” is proposed to shrink from last year, while field operations will go up. 

A specific proposed addition in the department is another full-time sexual assault investigator. The current full-time investigator has a case load of about 19 cases at a time, and in the course of that work had over 600 hours of overtime last year.

The vast majority of sexual assault cases go unreported, and survivors are often retraumatized and humiliated by the criminal legal system. Given this reality, it does not make sense to invest more on the process after harm has occurred while reducing spending on prevention. A broad survey of crime victims themselves shows that survivors want prevention and rehabilitation, not punishment.

Instead of more police, we can support the several culturally specific organizations who are working diligently, on shoe-string budgets, to prevent and address the harm of sexual violence in Iowa City.

We already have some compelling local data to support shifting investment away from police and punishment towards prevention and care. We should invest more in models that center the survivors of crime. Johnson County already has a small program for real accountability, where a handful of adult criminal cases have been diverted to restorative and transformative justice processes supported by Mediation Services of Eastern Iowa. Expansion of this program would have lasting impacts in delivering accountability to survivors and reducing recidivism.

In Iowa City, Shelter House’s permanent supportive housing programs for chronically homeless individuals have resulted in remarkable reductions in their emergency room, psychiatric, and jail stays, with the latter having decreased by 99-100% one year after housing. After accounting for the cost of housing and supportive services, these same people also saw reduced annual costs of 82% for their combined medical, mental health, legal, substance abuse treatment, housing, and case management services. These savings are also public savings, through reduction in use of police, fire, ambulance, jail, court, and state hospital services.

United Action for Youth recently received funding to expand a program that works with law enforcement to avoid charging children with low-level delinquency offenses and diverts them into a supportive program to repair harm in the community. Pre-charge diversion means that young people avoid having a charge on their record, while they also learn skills and gain support to help address the root causes of behavior that led to police interaction in the first place.

When engaging with neighbors, Americans have delegated the responsibility of many interpersonal interactions to police. We can change this trend, and the government can play a bigger role in supporting neighborhoods, without the threat of violence or arrest. 

The City of North Liberty has recruited and supports a diverse team of dozens of self-directed volunteer neighborhood ambassadors, part of its Great Neighborhoods initiative. This program provides neighborhood grants, events, and training. Ambassadors learn about local resources and municipal programs and services, and help with long-term community planning. The entire program budget is only $8,500 per year, a fraction of one Iowa City police officer.

In the coming years, our communities will face increased pressure from political extremism, climate change, economic turmoil, and continued aftershocks from the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges require focus and intention to build resilience, block by block and neighborhood by neighborhood. We must invest now in preventing harm and building paths for accountability. This is not just the government’s concern. We must work with community partners, support experts, and create new leaders. Investing in punishment will not save us.  

In his recent State of the City address, Mayor Bruce Teague highlighted the many strategic initiatives and regional collaborations to improve safety, including a strong statement that reducing violence requires better social and community supports.

From Imagination to Action

Imagining a world where people thrive without police is not as challenging as it may seem. 

Imagine if a 911 call could result in immediately dispatched, trained mental health professionals for a person in crisis, without the threat of jail.

This will happen by July, thanks to CommUnity Mobile Crisis Response and the JECSA.

Imagine if unsafe behavior was met with public servants who make referrals to avoid future harm and address underlying causes, not to inflict pain or put children in cages. 

These are our mental health liaisons.

Imagine a proliferation of City workers patrolling our neighborhoods to spread love and support, armed with ice cream and multilingual pamphlets promoting social services, not lethal force.

Have you heard my pitch for Fun Patrol?

I am pushing my colleagues to increase investments in community safety in ways that align with our stated values: investing more in neighborhood outreach and supports to empower and create leaders throughout our community; better communication about the great work of our many partners who provide an array of services to support people in times of need; and prioritizing updates to our land use policy and guiding documents to enable more inclusionary zoning. I am requesting that we hold the police budget where it is based on staffing 78 patrol officers, and shift funds towards prevention and survivor-centered accountability. This would be a shift of over $1 million.

The Iowa City council will hold a public hearing on the proposed budget, including the $17.3million police budget, on Tuesday, April 4, during our 6:00 p.m. formal meeting. 

My colleagues and I need to hear how you want us to invest in community safety.