Re-funding the police
Re-funding means re-funding
“Defunding police means defunding police. It does not mean budget tricks or funny math. It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so the exact same police remain in schools.”
—U.S. Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez, last year
THE ONLY surprising thing is that it took a year and a half to come full circle on this. Some of us thought it’d be more like a couple of months. But the criminals didn’t learn as fast as some of us expected, and the politicians are more educable than we’d imagined.
Left-leaning political leaders are beginning to refund police departments that they’d once demanded be defunded. Some are more public about their comments than others. But the pendulum has swung.
According to the FBI, as reported by Fox News, there was a nearly 30 percent jump in homicides last year as compared with the year before. (We’ll get this year’s final stats in a few weeks.) In the summer of 2020, protesters— and those who’d lead them, as soon as they discovered which way the mob was headed—demanded police departments be punished for bad cops.
After a while, the stories began appearing that DAs in some parts of the nation weren’t interested in prosecuting minor crimes. Chicago’s mayor proposed cutting $80 million from the police budget. New York City cut a 600officer plainclothes unit. Portland, Ore., created a police-free zone downtown. And the expected happened. Crime spiked. The phrase “smashand-grab” began making the headlines. Stores began to close. Or, in the alternative, hiring their own security. The mayors of some towns diverted traffic to account for crime in business districts.
People in some cities began leaving their car trunks open so criminals could look through the empty compartment without damaging the car. If that’s not the sign of a population giving up . . . .
Now, however, with voters angry and leftist politicians sufficiently chastised, authorities are starting to act like authority again.
■ San Francisco’s mayor has “unveiled a series of proposals . . . to curb the ongoing wave of crime and violence impacting the city, which includes securing emergency funds for law enforcement,” according to Fox.
■ Not far away, Oakland’s mayor has reversed herself. No longer suggesting public employees (social workers?) replace cops at crime scenes, a wave of burglaries and murders has the mayor promising to hire more cops.
■ In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot proposed to cut the police department by $80 million. That was last year. Now she’s asking the feds for help. She wants the ATF to come to her city to help investigate gun crimes.
■ After residents complained about long response times, the outgoing mayor of New York City says the local government will spend $100 million on a new police precinct in Queens.
■ And in Portland, the council and mayor have already cut millions from the police budget. But last month increased money to police again.
IS ALL this too late? Of course not. Oh, it may be too late for the buildings already burned and the glass already smashed and the jewelry already stolen. But once these stories begin making the news again, the criminals will hear it. And perhaps folks won’t have to leave their trunks unlocked and open while they grocery shop.
As cities begin re-funding the police, the bigger problem may be where to find them. Police, that is.
Many have retired. Or found other jobs. Or maybe can’t be recruited in the first place. Can anybody blame them? After what has been said about them by these very politicians who now require police help?
Actions have consequences. So do elections. Maybe some of these politicians will discover that soonest. And their communities might be better off for it.