Part 3: Comparing your city’s police spending to others Part 1 of this series was a quick overview of New Bedford’s 333-page FY2021 city budget along with a spreadsheet created from those numbers. Part 2 was a look at New Bedford’s department funding and how it changed from last year’s numbers. The New Bedford Police is being… Read More »
Part 2: Most departments “defunded” except for the New Bedford Police Budget: bud-jet; n. A systematic plan for the expenditure of a finite resource, such as money or time. Part 1 of this series is a quick overview of the City’s 333-page FY2021 New Bedford City budget along with a spreadsheet created from the numbers.… Read More »
Part 1: Introduction to New Bedford’s City Budget In the wake of a national moment of reckoning with policing in America, while some communities are making deep cuts to their police budgets, others have begun to examine them. To my knowledge no one has yet started the process of studying the New Bedford Police budget,… Read More »
Last night I read through Charlie Baker’s objections to S.2693, the conference version of the Police Accountability Bill. In his 13-page letter to both the House and Senate, Baker proposed extensive changes to the Legislature’s reforms. His main objection to Police Accountability was public accountability itself. Baker’s amendments to the Police Accountability bill remove: civilian… Read More »
“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating… Read More »
It’s hard to know what Massachusetts Democrats really believe in — besides power. One would be hard-pressed to find a lot of concern for racial justice. MassDems certainly don’t believe in immigrant rights, or they would have supported the Safe Communities Act. They don’t believe there is a problem with Native American mascots or a… Read More »
I don’t mean to veer into satire — it’s not really a strength and this is hardly a joking matter. But yesterday, as I was checking out the limitations of a piece of “freemium” software (as opposed to buying the full “Pro” plan), it dawned on me that our “justice” system is exactly like software… Read More »