The Fraternal Order of the Police’s Norman, Oklahoma chapter said the Norman City Council made its decision in violation of both the state’s open meeting law and a tax law that was designed to financially support public safety efforts throughout Norman, according to The Oklahoman.
A petition obtained by the paper said the officers represented by the FOP in Norman “are being deprived of these funds and the citizenry is being denied the full complement of law enforcement officers.”
Last month, the Norman City Council announced it had approved the city’s 2020-2021 budget, which included a $865,000 cut to the Norman Police Department’s proposed $969,005 budget. The city council made its decision after an 11-hour public budget meeting, which the Oklahoma City-based TV station KOKH Fox 25 reported dozens of Oklahomans attended to make their voices heard.
Though the city council said in a news release that the approved budget resulted in an overall increase of about $104,000 for the department compared with the funds approved for the previous fiscal year, it still required the elimination of nine officer positions. Seven of those positions were already vacant at the time the budget was approved, the city council said.
The funds to which the FOP referred in its petition initially passed in 2008 as a temporary 0.5 percent retail sales tax increase. The tax was part of a public safety program that sought to “expand the crime prevention community partnerships and problem solving activities of the Norman Police Department and to change the law enforcement culture of the City over time,” according to the city’s website. The collected taxes went toward hiring additional officers and supporting policing policies, the city said. Though initially set to expire in 2015, residents approved an extension of the tax law in 2014.
According to the city council, a majority of the funds collected through that sales tax moving forward will go toward a community outreach fund and the remainder will go toward internal audit efforts. City officials will decide how to use the funds intended for community outreach in collaboration with members of the public, the city council said.
As in many other states, officials in Oklahoma have begun considering strategies for addressing the systemic racism that exists in many branches of government and in police departments around the country. The calls for change began in response to the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who died while in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25. As news of Floyd’s death spread, protesters began to demonstrate in the U.S. and around the world, adding the names of others who died while in police custody to the cause along the way.
In the release announcing the city’s new budget, Mayor Breea Clark thanked Norman police for their work and said the cuts to the department’s proposed budget was not intended as a punishment.
“We are excited to take the next steps in re-defining what policing can and should be in 21st century Norman,” Clark said. “These budget amendments reflect an intentional effort to tackle systemic racism in our community and to be proactive as opposed to reactive in meeting the social service needs of our residents.”
The FOP in its petition described the city council’s budget decision as a “sham” and said it violated the tax law renewed in 2014," according to The Oklahoman.
The city council’s approved budget “breaches the trust of the citizens who relied on the City’s representation to make the temporary tax permanent by their vote in 2014,” the FOP’s petition said.
Newsweek reached out to the city council for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
