Who could gave guessed that defunding the police would cause crime to skyrocket?
Anyone with common sense, obviously. But, woke cities run by liberals learned the hard way as my colleague Stephen Kruiser wrote on June 7. According to a report from Fox Business, cities including New York City, Oakland, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles are “planning to reinstate tens of millions for the construction of new police precincts, increase police department budgets, among other plans to bankroll more efforts to confront the uptick in crime.”
Homicides alone have increased 24 percent since January, according to the report.
New York City “will return $92 million for a new precinct after the project had been cut last summer” as shooting incidents are up 68 percent this year, and have gone up 30 percent in the last month alone. Mayor DeBlasio will also restore half the $400 billion he cut from the NYPD’s operating budget. Baltimore, Maryland will reverse its $22 million cut to the police budget this year with an increase of $27 million.
Residents and businesses have also pushed back on the efforts to defund the police. “A group of 37 restaurants and small businesses in Baltimore recently sent a letter to the mayor, city council, and state’s attorney threatening to go on a tax and fee strike until leadership starts enforcing the law and addressing crime, drug dealing and other issues.” Residents of Minneapolis, Minnesota also filed a lawsuit against the city for failing to keep the people safe. According to the lawsuit, the city hasn’t met its minimum ratio of officers per citizen as required by the city charter.
But that’s not all. A community in Atlanta is responding to the “defund the police” efforts there by separating from the city and forming its own police department.
While restoring funding will certainly help, perhaps the more important question is whether anyone would want to be a part of law enforcement in municipalities that don’t fully support them. The Associated Press reported just last week that “law enforcement agencies across the country experienced a wave of retirements and departures and are struggling to recruit the next generation of police officers,” since the death of George Floyd reignited anti-police sentiment and protests calling for “defunding the police.”
While it’s good that these woke cities that thought they were doing something good by calling police racist and defunding their police departments are starting to acknowledge the error of their ways, why would anyone want to serve a city whose leadership doesn’t have their backs, and caves to the outrage mob? I suspect that these efforts won’t fully solve the problems these cities faced by turning their backs on those who risked their lives to keep their cities safe. The damage done to these cities by their leaders embracing the “defund the police” movement won’t be solved by money alone. New leadership will be needed to rebuild trust between law enforcement and these communities.
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