Dear Editor,
The campaign “Defund the Police” has been misunderstood as somehow getting rid of police departments. Nothing could be farther from the truth. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/06/19/what-does-defund-the-police-mean-and-does-it-have-merit/ No one is saying to rid cities of police departments. Some organizations are using people’s fear suggesting that there is an “us and them,” and those kind of mis-understandings often promote more divisiveness in our complicated shared human experience.
This week, I was driving down Sepulveda and just south of Lucerne, noticed a huge billboard sponsored by the Culver City Police Department about who they are endorsing for City seats this November election. When did police departments have so much money that they could afford to put up billboards? My research show billboards in Los Angeles typically cost between $2000 and $9000 a month.
I mean it’s one thing that a particular union support a candidate for the candidate’s election material, but it’s quite another situation that a police department is funding billboards to sway voters.
Plus, the police budget is NOT on the November election for Culver City. So how do the police have extra money for this kind of odd advertisement? Why do they feel it necessary to promote candidates via a billboard?
Perhaps it is worth considering that some of the “defunding” could be used to help people in our city vs promoting campaign platforms? It seems like there needs to be some funding for psychologists and other specialists for our students, medical care and other specialists for our homeless, food resources and housing for our hungry.
I’m sure there is a ton of need out there that I’m not even aware of.
But I know one thing…We don’t need a billboard.
Amy Roberts Brunell
Two things of note here. Unfortunately, there is a very radical faction standing in front of council calling for the elimination of the police department budget and do not subscribe to the original concept.
The other point is that there is a common misunderstanding that “police advertising” is funded by CCPD. It is not. Look closely at these ads and you will see that it is funded by CCPOA, Culver City Police Officer Association, which is a union of our officers and is funded privately by our officers out of their pay just like any other labor union. None of the ads you see are funded by the City of Culver City and not your tax dollars. This is commonly misunderstood.