Defunding the police

Far-left calls to “defund the police” created massive headaches for Democratic candidates in the 2020 election, but few departments actually saw budget cuts. In fact, law enforcement spending as a share of general costs in the 50 largest U.S. cities actually ticked up this year. Some cities did make cuts: Portland, Ore., slashed police funding by 6 percent, inciting more than 100 days of violent protests from activists who deemed the $15 million cut insufficient. Austin cut

$150 million from its $434 million police budget, San Francisco diverted $60 million from police funding toward low-income health programs, and Los Angeles reallocated $150 million from the police toward programs supporting people of color. New York City cut $1 billion from its $6 billion police budget, removing homeless monitoring and school protection from the department’s purview. In Minneapolis, the city council voted to trim the department’s 2021 budget by $8 million and redirect those funds to mental-health and violence-prevention initiatives. But the cuts won’t cost any of the city’s 888 officers their jobs, and amid a nearly 25 percent increase in violent crime in the city last year, the department remains widely mistrusted. A survey of city residents found that 75 percent of black respondents said they still do not believe officers are held accountable for misconduct. The Minneapolis PD, the survey concluded, “does not respect the community...is racist, rude, lacks compassion, and uses excessive force that has resulted in general mistrust.”