Austin city limits

An experiment all should watch

DEFUNDING the police really doesn’t mean “defunding.” Or so part of the argument goes. There are those who say yes indeed, they mean it, 100 percent, when they say police should be defunded—and stick to their guns. But the less radical among the port-leaning promoters of Defund The Police say they just want money moved around in various city and state budgets, so social services are given the same priority as sticking people in jail on the quick.

We’ll see. For down in Texas, in a famously blue city in a sea of red, they’re going to try that budget mix.

And pull a bunch of money from the police to spend elsewhere.

The place is Austin. Home of the University of Texas, great music and liberal opinion.

Dispatches say that by a unanimous vote—unanimous!—the city council of Austin voted to cut about a third of its police budget. And spend that $150-million-plus elsewhere, mainly on social services.

The AP story said those millions will be spent on response to the pandemic, mental health programs, housing, violence prevention, victim services and abortion access.

Abortion access? Does the plan to reduce the need for police in Austin include having fewer people in Austin? Apparently so. But in a city that leans that far left, you might could expect abortion funding in a school lunch plan. But that’s another editorial or eight.

Nearly $50 million will also be spent on the city’s Reimagine Safety Fund, which the paper said aims to provide “alternative forms of public safety.” And here we thought public safety was pretty well defined: It includes being able to live your life without burglary, arson, assault or robbery. Cops are needed to prevent all that, and, when unpreventable, they are sent to catch the offenders.

But not in Austin. The police chief says the cuts will prevent him from filling jobs and completing cadet classes, among other things. The chief said at a news conference that these changes will be unlike anything he’s seen.

The Austin Police Association also weighed in: “The council’s budget proposals continue to become more ridiculous and unsafe for Austinites. They are going to ignore the majority who do not want the police defunded.”

There are other opinions on the matter: Gregorio Casar, an Austin city council member, called the move “unprecedented in Texas,” and he ain’t kidding. He took to Twitter to say that the city “should celebrate what the movement has achieved for safety, racial justice and democracy.”

Well.

Violence prevention and mental-health services sound like necessary line items in a city’s budget. (Along with police cars and precinct upkeep.) But how diverting dollars away from police—into housing, coronavirus response and abortion—is going to improve safety, racial justice and democracy is more debatable.

But the experiment is underway. Remember, the vote was unanimous. The city leaders of Austin, Texas, have given the movement what it wants—fewer cops on the beat, more money into social programs.

Let’s the rest of us keep watch on the goings-on inside Austin city limits the next few years. For something tells us this will be worth watching. And learning from.