DC Spends Millions Creating Crises But Won’t Pay to Help People in Crisis
By Afeni Evans, Community Organizer, and Loreal Hawk, Staff Attorney at Advancement Project May 21, 2026
By Afeni Evans, Community Organizer, and Loreal Hawk, Staff Attorney at Advancement Project May 21, 2026
It has been six years since George Floyd was murdered in our streets. Six years since organizers across the country, from Minnesota to Los Angeles and DC and New York reclaimed our streets, tax dollars, backyards, neighborhoods, and Council hearings. Six years have passed since officers shot a protester in the face, and officers across the country arrested and brutalized other protesters for exercising their First Amendment Rights.
People across the world protested; from Canada to Brazil and Palestine to Australia, communities raised images of George Floyd’s face alongside their flags in the name of solidarity and a global reckoning on racial justice and police violence. In DC—one of the centers of the 2020 uprisings — Defund MPD called for a plan to reduce the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) by 50% by 2023.
Organizers and our communities won — we won big. Police department spending was reduced or frozen in Minneapolis, New York, and Los Angeles. Calls to defund the police weren’t the only ones heard. Moves to provide major increases to rent payment assistance, to cancel rent altogether, and serious proposals to provide universal basic income also saw traction from council hearings to presidential debates and platforms.
As we remain steadfast in our mission, we still have to battle with politicians who refuse to heed the demands from the communities they are supposed to represent. DC Council and Mayor Bowser have increased MPD’s budget by over $40 million in the last six years, with plans to increase the 2027 MPD budget by $89 million alone.
Mayor Bowser has served in her role for over 12 years. In those 12 years she has witnessed residents and constituents suffer from lack of housing, inflation, tariffs, a pandemic, mass layoffs triggered by this presidential administration’s “DEI” cuts, multiple rounds of intense police brutality from MPD, federal law enforcement, and National Guard occupation.
Instead of choosing to provide her constituents with the care they desperately need, she has instead chosen to take away and severely reduce programs and pour DC residents’ dollars into MPD’s budget for salaries, benefits, and expensive tech toys used to surveil and harass our communities. She wants to spend $88 million of the $89 million budget increase to MPD on overtime, raises, and surveillance tech like AI-enhanced license plate readers like Flock and CCTV.
At the same time, Mayor Bowser is proposing an approximate $60 million in cuts to the Department of Human Services, severely impacting programs that support residents. Mayor Bowser is also proposing cuts to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program that will impact at least 15,000 children. The Bowser Administration also plans to eliminate mobile psychiatric services for youth in the city and crisis stabilization beds for people in mental health crises to stay and receive care. The community response team, which dispatches non-police personnel for emotional, psychiatric or substance use issues and its accompanying hotline, will also see a cut of over $2 million. Services for survivors of domestic violence will also see a 20% reduction based on the proposed budget.
Instead of funding programs that provide food, housing, and healthcare assistance to residents, Mayor Bowser would rather invest in $25,000 signing bonuses to MPD. She plans to continue investing in police who seem to trigger crises, instead of investing in programs that can help reduce crime and solve crises without police.
If Mayor Bowser’s currently proposed budget gets implemented, families will struggle to afford housing and groceries, all while the officers that surveil, harass, incarcerate and murder them receive premium bonuses, raises, and benefits. Moreover, for DC residents in crisis and in need of support as survivors of violence or basic medical care, there will be little to no services left to care for them. Our communities still haven’t fully recovered from the 2020 pandemic, and unemployment and economic instability has increased due to inflation, tariffs, and mass layoffs.
As the DC Council works to finalize its budget by June 23, 2026, we demand that leaders take measures that actually respond to these crises. Instead of investing an additional $89 million in MPD, they should introduce and invest in measures to protect residents’ autonomy and sovereignty. They must end the collaboration with federal law enforcement and National Guard by dismantling and canceling cooperation agreements with federal agencies and contracts with tech companies like Flock, Fusus, and SoundThinking (fka Shotspotter). They must end needless spending on equipment like $6 million helicopters and drones to terrorize families in the air and cut MPD overtime spending to stop harassment on the ground.
Instead, we demand that local officials use a fraction of this $89 million to restore funding for ERAP, TANF, and crisis teams. They could reopen the housing voucher list for the first time in 13 years. In the face of $89 million, what is $600,000 to restore funding to SOME and Woodley House to run the merely 16 crisis beds that provide care to the entire District? Moreover, what if DC invested less than 15% of MPD’s increase into centers like OnPoint NYC, that provide harm reduction, health care and food, that could reduce costs by up to $55 million and prevent hundreds of overdoses a year?
As Mayor Bowser ends her last mayoral term, and other mayors across the country continue to govern their constituents through these turbulent times, residents must call on their electeds to respond with care, not punishment; with services, not surveillance and incarceration. Communities must demand that their elected officials fight for their autonomy instead of caving to outside pressure from federal agencies and presidential administrations. They must call on their local and state officials to deliver the true public safety they once called for in George Floyd’s name. And when their governments fail to keep its people safe, we must remember — in Mr. Floyd’s honor and the thousands of organizers from Minneapolis, to DC’s own Nee Nee Taylor: “we will keep us safe.”