BOSTON — The last time Boston sent a social worker to a 911 call, the man on the other side of the door came out swinging a sword, knocked the clinician to the ground, and stabbed a Boston police officer in the arm before officers shot him dead at the scene.

That was April. Now the city's woke Council wants to fund more social workers, and chop $3 million off the police budget to do it.

Yes, all of it real.

In the summer of 2020, after George Floyd's death, "DEFUND THE POLICE" went from fringe slogan to mainstream Democratic policy in roughly six weeks. Minneapolis, Seattle, and Portland all chopped police budgets and routed the money into "alternative response" programs in which unarmed social workers were dispatched to crisis calls in place of officers. By 2023, most of those cities were quietly walking it back as crime spiked and clinicians got hurt.

Boston never quite moved on. The most progressive major city in the country just rebranded the project: "co-responder," "non-police response," "diversion." Same idea, new wallpaper.

Boston already runs a co-responder unit called the BEST program — Boston Emergency Services Team — which pairs a master's-level mental-health clinician with officers on certain crisis calls. BEST has been running since 2011 and handled more than 4,000 encounters in 2023 alone.

The $500,000 line item Weber wants to peel off BPD overtime would expand that exact program.

Weber's plan carves $3.08 million out of the Boston Police Department — $1.58 million from officer salaries and $1.5 million from overtime — and splits it across a dozen line items including $600,000 in equity cabinet grants, $500,000 for the non-police mental-health response unit, $500,000 for Grow Boston (a city food-production initiative), $500,000 for community land trusts, $100,000 for public restrooms, and $25,000 for literacy programming.

Weber's stated rationale: the police positions getting defunded are vacancies the city does not expect to fill anyway. That is not an argument. That is calling the hole a feature.

Boston Police is currently 300 officers short of the city's own legal minimum. The Boston Municipal Code mandates a 2,500-officer floor; the most recent BPD headcount sits at 2,188 sworn officers — a gap of 312.

It gets dumber. Mayor Michelle Wu has openly admitted to the Boston Globe editorial board that her administration deliberately under-budgets the police overtime line every year, to make the BPD budget increase look smaller and more politically "palatable." She set this year's overtime at $55.64 million while telling the Globe — flat-out — that the city expects to blow past it again.

The whole budget process on policing in this city is theater. Wu admitted it. Now the Council wants to chop more off the make-believe number. Wu has previously vetoed Council attempts to cut public safety, but whether she vetoes this one is the open question.

The full Council votes on Weber's package Wednesday.

The Council deadlocked 6-6 last month on rejecting Wu's budget outright. It heads into Wednesday divided again. The DEFUND THE POLICE movement is back in Boston. Whether the Council says it out loud or just funds it quietly is what gets decided this week.