Los Angeles voters have authorized Measure J, also called “Reimagine LA County,” which requires that 10 % of the town’s unrestricted basic funds — estimated between $360 million and $900 million per 12 months — be invested in social companies and alternate options to incarceration, not prisons and policing.
As of Wednesday afternoon, with a majority of votes counted, 57.1 % of voters supported the measure, 42.9 % opposed, in response to the Los Angeles County registrar.
The measure’s passage comes at a second when activists throughout the US — together with in LA — have referred to as for defunding police departments. Whereas Measure J isn’t instantly a defund the police initiative, it was designed as an necessary first step towards the general public well being and investment-based mannequin of public security that animates the defund motion.
A critique typically made by police reformers of all stripes is that American cities rely far too closely on regulation enforcement to handle points like substance abuse, psychological well being, and homelessness that will be higher dealt with by social service suppliers and civilian responders. Thus, they typically agree that some degree of funding must be redirected from police division budgets to these various service suppliers.
In follow, that’s precisely what Measure J is prone to do. The measure’s language doesn’t explicitly require that the funds for social companies and incarceration alternate options have to be diverted from regulation enforcement and the jail system. However, in an August board assembly, performing county chief government Fesia Davenport mentioned that the Sheriff’s Division — which accounts for $2 billion of the present native finances — would probably be impacted.
The truth that Measure J echoes calls for to defund the police isn’t an accident. The cost to assist the initiative was led by the Re-Think about L.A. County coalition: a group of just about 100 native racial and felony justice organizations, together with Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, progressive political teams, and native unions — a lot of which had been on the forefront of the profitable organizing effort to cease LA County’s $2.2 billion jail enlargement plan in 2019.
“Measure J solutions county voters’ name for true structural change by guaranteeing by way of a constitution modification that {dollars} from present county funds are devoted to the precedence applications and companies our Black and Brown communities want for an equitable future,” Eunisses Hernandez, co-chair of Re-Think about L.A. County, informed Patch. “Measure J invests in jobs, quite than jails; in folks, quite than punishment; and in psychological well being quite than incarceration.”
How Measure J will work, briefly defined
Measure J will amend LA county’s constitution, requiring the native Board of Supervisors to allocate a 10th of its roughly $8.Eight billion discretionary native finances to applications and companies that fall inside certainly one of two classes: “direct neighborhood funding,” which incorporates inexpensive housing, job coaching, and investments in minority-owned companies; and “alternate options to incarceration,” which incorporates restorative justice applications, psychological well being and substance abuse dysfunction therapy, and jail reentry initiatives.
The measure prohibits the town from utilizing any of these funds on regulation enforcement or incarceration. And it explicitly dictates that the brand new funds “can’t supplant” present social service or alternate options to incarceration spending — they have to be taken from elsewhere.
Crucially, Measure J isn’t merely a one-off budgetary concession; it codifies the 10 % funding mandate into regulation with no sundown clause. For supporters, that is the measure’s most necessary function: LA County will probably be required to proceed funding alternate options to policing and incarceration in perpetuity, lengthy after fast political stress for police reform dies down.
It’s “one thing that’s going to survive me, it’s going to survive you, and it hopefully impacts the communities that come after us,” Hernandez informed the New Republic.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors authorized inserting the measure on the poll by a vote of 4-1 in early August. That call was largely in response not solely to the protest motion for racial justice that rose to new prominence this summer season, however to stress by teams just like the Re-Think about L.A. Coalition,
The measure went on to garner public assist from quite a few native and statewide officers like LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, California Rep. Adam Schiff, and California’s Secretary of State Alex Padilla, in addition to neighborhood leaders like Dolores Huerta, organizations just like the Los Angeles County Democratic Occasion, and main publications just like the LA Occasions.
In the meantime, Measure J drew sharp opposition from native regulation enforcement leaders who argued it’s a thinly veiled try and defund the police. Earlier this 12 months, LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva took to social media to warn that if the modification passes, the measure would result in de facto cuts to regulation enforcement budgets, leading to patrol station closures, officer layoffs, and a dystopian future during which the streets of LA would look “like a scene from Mad Max.” The Affiliation for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs alone has spent greater than $3.5 million on marketing campaign promoting aimed toward convincing the general public that Measure J’s purpose is to defund the police.
The advocates pushing for Measure J, nevertheless, have prevented framing the initiative in these phrases. The rhetoric of defunding the police is totally absent from the marketing campaign’s web site and outreach supplies. As an alternative, the marketing campaign’s messaging has targeted nearly solely on the advantages of elevated funding in underserved Black and brown communities.
That was a probable strategic determination by the Re-Think about LA County coalition. Nationwide polls from this summer season point out that voters largely assist investing in social companies and policing alternate options; nevertheless, direct questions on defunding or abolishing the police are sometimes opposed by majorities. As an example, a June Reuters/Ipsos ballot discovered that 76 % of respondents supported proposals to shift cash from policing to social companies however solely 39 % supported “defunding the police.” And polling performed by the Re-Think about L.A. Coalition and the native polling outfit Evitarus in LA county discovered comparable outcomes.
In a 12 months when most main cities have responded to nationwide protests by rising their police budgets, and others have walked again or circumvented their commitments to slash police spending, the strategic selection to border Measure J as an funding — and develop a poll initiative that doesn’t explicitly reduce police funding — might clarify why the initiative has succeeded the place so many others have failed.
Supporters additionally level to the profitable efforts of native organizers to cease LA County’s $2.2 billion jail enlargement plan in 2019 and push native authorities to develop the county’s Alternate options to Incarceration Workgroup report as laying the political and coalitional basis for Measure J’s eventual victory.
Voters confirmed the efficacy of that technique this week. The passage of Measure J is maybe probably the most vital victory for the police reform motion since this summer season’s protests.