Let us assert at the outset that we don’t know, and there’s no way to know, if anything would have changed.
But the Chattanooga Police Department’s own timeline of events preceding an early morning shooting incident on June 5 near Mary’s Bar & Grill on McCallie Avenue made us wonder about the city’s decision last year to cut 25 unfilled positions from the police department.
City officials at the time described the decision as part of their plan to “re-imagine policing” and said some of the money would be diverted to a co-response team.
Local activists in the wake of protests following the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police said funds from the local police department should be cut and “reinvested back into our community.” However, learning of the unfilled positions cut and creation of the co-response team, they described the moves as “empty promises meant to keep people satisfied and quiet,” as “halfhearted gestures” and as “dip[ping] their toes in the water of progress and declaring themselves washed of all sin.”
Chattanooga police, it cannot be refuted, had had a difficult time for years in keeping a full police force, in recruiting minorities for the force, and in paying them enough to retain them.