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City council weighs cuts to the police budget

caption: Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda.
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Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda.
Courtesy of Jamie Rand Imaging/Jamie Colman

Coronavirus has left gaping shortfalls in municipal budgets – is defunding police one way to close them? How the cops are often shielded from prosecution, and how the school year went for you.

Individual segments are available in our podcast stream or at www.kuow.org/record.

City councilmember Teresa Mosqueda

As protests continue, demands to defund the police are moving from the streets to the chambers of the city council. We spoke to Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the budget council, about how they might do it.

Qualified immunity

Due to a legal principle called qualified immunity, the bar to hold police accountable for violence or even killing a civilian is quite high. Jeff Feldman is a professor at the University of Washington School of Law; he joined Ross Reynolds to discuss the history of how police have been shielded from liability.

How'd the school year go?

The strange school year of 2019-2020 is finally over. How did it go for teachers? And how did it go for you? Bill Radke asked Seattle instructors Melissa Baron and Morgan Leming, and took your calls.

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