That has disappointed activists who believed such progressive bastions were where the movement that Floyd’s death inspired, with its calls for enhanced civilian oversight and reduced police spending, seemed most likely to succeed.
Mayors and chiefs of police in those suburban cities and towns said they’ve made significant changes to policing since that summer, particularly by reinforcing a focus on community policing, and are implementing further reforms gradually to make sure they are effective and have public support. Some have rejected systemic overhaul outright.
“I’ve never believed in defunding our police department,” Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller said. At the same time, “I’ve known how important it is to support 21st-century community policing here in Newton,” she said.
Activists who organized the 2020 protests and have spent much of the past two years lobbying their local governments are frustrated with the lack of action on policy changes that, in their view, have strong majority backing and will make communities safer.
That such liberal strongholds would be cautious over calls for far-reaching policing reform raises broader questions about whether the systemic changes activists envisioned after Floyd’s death are possible anywhere in the country, especially as opinion polls show declining support across demographic lines for such measures.
“This is in some ways the story of race in America,” said Tatishe Nteta, a University of Massachusetts Amherst political scientist. “There are these periods of time in which there is a lot of attention on issues which pertain to people of color and you see mobilization by, in particular, whites to embrace these particular policies and over time . . . you see a decrease in support.”
Newton’s current $24.8 million police budget is the highest in city history. In progressive-minded Cambridge, the $73.5 million police budget approved this summer represents a 20 percent increase since the 2020 fiscal year.
“Every time I’ve moved to not increase the budget, I didn’t even propose a real cut, just keeping it flat, and the vote fails every time eight to one,” said Cambridge City Councilor Quinton Zondervan, a democratic socialist. “We’re not as left wing as we think we are, apparently.”
Indeed, it’s inflation, not socialist city councilors, that has contributed most to cutting local police budgets in the last few years.
To be sure, activists have secured some victories. In Somerville, the city council cut the police budget by 8 percent in 2020 and this summer eliminated a $637,000 increase to the mayor’s proposed police budget, a move widely hailed by activists. The money would have primarily funded body cameras for officers, although councilors decided to craft a policy for their use before they approved the money.
Yet Somerville’s well-organized advocates, many of whom say they want to abolish the police, want far deeper cuts.
In Cambridge, the city council included $2.9 million in its latest budget to create a community safety department, a six-person staff who would respond to problems, like mental health emergencies, in lieu of the police.
While it seemed like a major victory, the reaction among activists was mixed. A group of Black women, frustrated by the slow pace of progress, had already organized an alternative response program called Cambridge HEART, with a full staff who have each undergone more than 600 hours of training for responding to domestic violence and mental health incidents, among other situations.
That group has offered to work with the city and is negotiating with the city manager over its role, according to Stephanie Guirand, a founder.
“Why fund two things that do the same thing?” she said.
In other Democratic strongholds in Boston’s suburbs, alternatives to traditional policing have not been implemented or are proceeding slowly. Activists point out that those models, in which some emergency calls are directed to…
Read More: Even in Boston’s left-leaning suburbs, some police reforms remain elusive two