After the death of George Floyd, there were overreactions in cities run by liberal mayors everywhere. One of the most liberal cities, San Francisco, reacted by reducing the budget for the police and sheriff’s departments by a whopping $120 million.
At the time of the announcement Mayor London Breed had this to say:
Reforming our criminal justice system must go hand-in-hand with policy changes and budget investments to make our city more equitable. By redirecting funding from law enforcement agencies back into the African American community, we are putting our words into action, and we are doing it by listening to a community that for too long has been unheard and underserved. We chose to change how this city and how this country treats our young Black men.
Well, I hope she has some of her favorite seasonings available because she is now forced to eat those words. Her actions have spurred an unprecedented rise in crime. Last year, after those initial cuts, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a $50 million increase in the San Francisco Police Department’s (SFPD) budget, but it obviously wasn’t enough.
According to the SFPD, as of this past Sunday, there have already been 40 murders in the city compared to 36 for the entire year in 2022. Robberies, which have caused many businesses to move out of the city, have increased to 1,989 compared to 1,704 reported incidents all of last year. The amount of total reported crimes has ballooned to 36,573 this year and will surpass the 37,674 reported last year as well.
The city is desperate enough to look for additional officers out of state for the first time ever. This month the city’s police department will visit four universities in Gov. Greg Abbott’s state of Texas. The four campuses the recruiting staff will visit are Texas Southern University, Sam Houston State University, Prairie View A&M University, and Texas A&M University.
Matt Dorsey, a former police communications staffer, stated that the police department’s full-duty police officers have been reduced by 335 from 2017. The city had 1,537 officers as of January; a police staffing analysis estimated the city needed more than 2,100 officers to work properly.
Earlier this week, the San Francisco Deputy Sheriff’s Association accused Breed of again quietly defunding the department, saying it discovered at a labor-management meeting that the city had made cuts to the sheriff’s budget. The association claimed that when it asked the city about the cuts, they were told that the city was broke.
Ken Lomba, President of the San Francisco Deputy Sheriff’s Association, said, “We want to be part of the solution, but time and time again, the mayor seems to block the sheriff from doing that. And this is another example. She’s cut the funding for those items and it almost seems like silent defunding, you know? For us and we’re trying to help.”
Related: Democrat Mayor of ‘Welcoming City’ Points Finger at Republicans
It’s been widely reported that the streets in areas of the city are polluted with feces and needles resulting from lax laws concerning open drug use and homelessness. In August alone, there were 84 deaths, with 66 of them involving fentanyl. The latest figures show that overdose deaths are continuing to rise, resulting in more companies closing up and moving on because of the dangerous surroundings.
Over the past months, Old Navy and Nordstrom have announced that they will be closing all locations in the city. In fact, since 2019, the Union Square area, an upscale shopping mecca that I have personally visited on several occasions, has lost 96 businesses. Where there once were 203, now only 107 remain.
The loss of revenue has caused economists to warn the city that they are falling into an urban doom loop. This dilemma occurs when office spaces and retail stores close creating a real estate apocalypse that slows commerce and destroys local tax revenue in the process.
London Breed is a woke liberal who, like all of the left, has lost touch with reality. Did she really think that cutting the police budget and losing officers would make the city streets safer? Combine fewer officers on the streets enforcing the law with a woke judicial system that releases criminals who are arrested back onto the streets, and you have a police force that is not only overwhelmed but whose morale is also crushed.
There’s a touch of irony in the fact that while Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass rails against Greg Abbott because he is sending immigrants to her “welcoming city,” San Francisco is dipping into his state looking for police reinforcements to patrol San Francisco.
Liberal lunacy and the results of woke decisions are on full display in San Francisco. No one is leaving their heart there anymore; they’re just leaving.
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