In eastern Kansas congressional race, ‘defunding police’ claim distorts the facts
In debates, ads and speeches, Kansas Treasurer Jake La Turner has sought to make one thing clear: his opponent in the 2nd Congressional District race, Topeka Mayor Michelle De La Isla, is working to defund her city’s police department.
LaTurner’s strategy is in lockstep with Republican candidates up and down ballots nationwide in 2020. They are using “defund the police” as a term to signal that their Democratic rivals want to weaken or even abolish police service.
LaTurner’s message comes with a twist. While other Republicans say their opponents would support such policies, LaTurner says De La Isla is already implementing them in Topeka.
The claims, however, don’t stand up to the data.
City budgets reviewed by The Star confirm the decrease in overall police staffing between 2013 and 2019 cited by the LaTurner campaign. But total department spending has increased by $5 million since De La Isla took office in 2017 and, according to Topeka Police Chief Bill Cochran, only civilian positions have been eliminated. Four officers have been added to the 299-member force since 2017, he said.
The call to “defund the police“ gained prominence during protests for racial justice over the summer. Some politicians and activists do use the term to call for a transformation of law enforcement from the ground up. For most who invoke it means reallocation of police funds to education, mental health and other services so that crime decreases and social workers can respond to calls that officers are generally not trained or equipped to handle.
LaTurner has repeatedly pointed to an interview and news conference where De La Isla said defunding the police was already occurring in Topeka.
“Mayor De La Isla has taken positions in favor of defunding the police and opposed to it depending on who she is talking to,” LaTurner’s spokeswoman Kara Zeyer said in an email. “LaTurner believes Topeka needs more officers, not fewer, and Michelle De La Isla’s policies are taking Topeka in the wrong direction.”
De La Isla says she was talking about investments the city had made in crime prevention programs, not defunding police.
“It’s never been about eliminating police departments,” she said.
‘Dirty politics’
The Topeka police department’s funding increased by more than $5 million from 2017, when De La Isla took office, until 2020, according to city records. This year’s budget is $40.95 million, with a slight decrease to $40.84 million anticipated for 2021.
The Topeka Chief of Police, Bill Cochran, said that although the department has gained funding in the last four years, rising personnel costs have limited discretionary spending. It means, for example, delays in purchase of equipment.
“City budgets are very difficult, there’s only so much money that goes around,” he said. “One of the things you have to weigh is if there’s something that can be eliminated it’s eliminated.”
The cut from 2020 to 2021 and the loss of discretionary funds over time, Cochran said, is similar to cuts that every department has been asked to make.
PJay Carter, president of Black Lives Matter Topeka, said city leadership has moved slowly in response to calls for change. He said he’s seen no evidence of police defunding and called LaTurner’s efforts to claim it is happening “dirty politics dripping with male privilege, white privilege.” Carter’s organization has not pushed for defunding.
“We have no clue what LaTurner is talking about,” Carter said. “Our mayor is just as supportive of our police department as she is this community.”
LaTurner’s claims, De La Isla said, are needlessly scaring residents of Topeka into believing the police department will cease to exist.
“The fact that he’s choosing to use these words are extremely painful,” she said. “I don’t understand what is the need to create false claims that are causing concern to our community.”
In an email, LaTurner’s spokeswoman, Zeyer, said the campaign had heard from “many” Topeka police officers concerned with De La Isla’s policies who were afraid to speak out because of internal policies or fear of retribution.
She also cast doubt on Cochran’s statements.
“Anyone who has ever held a job understands the awkward position Police Chief Cochran must be in when his boss just instructed him to go defend her horrible record to the media,” Zeyer said.
‘Decisions are my decisions’
In a TV ad released Tuesday, LaTurner claimed 30 police department positions, roughly 10%, have been eliminated since De La Isla joined the city council in 2013 until 2019.
This is true.
However, none of those employees were officers, Cochran said. As cuts have been made to city budgets, Cochran said, his office has eliminated some administrative and records-related civilian positions.
Additionally, De La Isla said, many of those positions were civilian workers whose jobs were moved to the city’s neighborhood relations department, an agency that provides housing services and works to engage residents in local government.
Ron Gish, a retired Topeka police officer, said he’d heard from officers concerned about changes to the department and city council efforts to pass new use-of-force policies promoted by 8 Can’t Wait.
Gish claimed that units he viewed as effective when he was an officer have been eliminated or reduced.
“If they’ve eliminated all of these units that are proactive that are effective where did the money go,” Gish asked.
Cochran, the police chief, said Gish is misinformed.
Changes, he said, have been made over time in an effort to raise efficiency and adjust to retirements rather than continuing to do things as they’ve always been done.
“When you have shortness in staff you have to allocate manpower where you are most efficient,” he said. “When you’re an outsider and you look in you don’t understand or you don’t know why those things are taking place.”
Furthermore, he said, decisions on staffing are up to him, not De La Isla. He consults the City Manager, Mayor and City Council on important issues and is subject to their approval on a budget.
“The decisions are my decisions,” he said.
Gish, the former officer, organized a rally outside city hall over the summer when council members planned to discuss enshrining the 8 Can’t Wait policies into city law.
He said he believed city leaders, including De La Isla, were bending to the will of protesters to avoid civil unrest rather than providing support to law enforcement. He referenced involvement in protests by members of Topeka’s Human Relations Commission as proof of this point.
“City council the mayor and the city manager have created these advisory groups that are getting a strong voice in how our department should be run,” he said. “They’ve micromanaged the police department.”
Cochran, however, said the Topeka Police Department is progressive and already employed many of those policies. Furthermore, he said, he has used some of the department’s budget to invest in crisis intervention training and a behavioral health unit.
“It’s not one of those things where I go off and do whatever I want to do, if there’s major changes I consult with the council, the mayor and the city manager because if it’s a dramatic change they have a right to know and understand what’s taking place,” Cochran said.
“Department heads are allowed to run their departments here in the city of Topeka.”
This story was originally published October 30, 2020 at 11:27 AM.
