Law Enforcement has become a target in 2020. Media has seized every opportunity to demonize the entire law enforcement community, using isolated events to cast the entire system as being violent, corrupt, and irredeemably racist. Politicians and activist groups with an agenda to completely reshape the structure of this country didn’t let this crisis go to waste. The “Defund the Police” movement is a radical response, pushed by radical players. Here are some of the major metropolitan areas whose governments voted to “Defund the Police”:
Minneapolis
Minneapolis was the epicenter of the “Defund The Police,” BLM protests and riots this summer after the death of George Floyd. Their city council was also the first in the nation to vote to defund their police department in June. Justification used to put the measure forward was the whiteness of the Minneapolis Police Department and its failure to “reflect” the city’s makeup, wrote NPR. “Under the proposed plan, the city would eliminate the existing police department and replace it with ‘a department of community safety and violence prevention.’”
New York City
In July, The Big Apple, under the esteemed leadership of Mayor Bill De Blasio was the next major city to cut its funding to its police operations. The NYPD is the largest police department in the country, serving the people of the nation’s largest city. As reported by Newsweek, the precursor to outright defunding the department was the abolition of its plainclothes undercover unit, the largest of its kind in the nation. “Why? This is 21st century policing,” the commissioner continued. “Intelligence, data, ShotSpotter, video, DNA and building prosecutable cases,” said NYPD Chief, Dermot Shea. The City Council in NYC voted to start defunding the NYPD shortly thereafter, cutting $484m from the department’s budget effective 2021, reported USA Today. The negative ramifications were nearly instantaneous as “changes will cancel a nearly 1,200-person police recruiting class set for next month.” According to De Blasio, “This budget prioritizes our communities most in need while keeping New Yorkers safe.”
Cook County, Illinois
Chicago, Illinois is one of, if not the most violent city in America. Chicago is located in Cook County, Illinois. The rampant, unending violence of the Windy City didn’t stop the Cook County Board of Commissioners from passing a resolution to “redirect funds from policing.” The resolution, called Justice for Black Lives, “says the county ‘should engage in efforts to redirect funds from policing and incarceration to public services not administered by law enforcement that promote community health and safety equitably across the County,’” reported the Chicago Sun Times. It is not yet clear exactly how this measure will affect law enforcement budgets going forward.
Portland, OR
Does any city capture the spirit of lawlessness in America quite like Portland, Oregon? The unofficial headquarters of Leftist Anarchist group ANTIFA, also unsurprisingly voted to defund their police department this summer. It took Portland City Council two attempts to pass a budget in June, as one commissioner voted against the initial push to pass a budget with reduced police spending…because it didn’t cut enough money from the Portland Police Bureau, according to KGW8 News. The passed budget cut $15m in funding from the bureau and cut 84 jobs. “Please take a moment to celebrate this victory, and let it fuel your fire, because we’re not done,” said one commissioner, Chloe Eudaly.
It should come as no surprise that crime, especially violent crime, has spiraled out of control in every one of these jurisdictions. Defund the Police was a social justice rallying call which has led to the further decay of the social contracts in these cities. Defunding police in Minneapolis, the first city in the country to enact this radical concept, has been an abject disaster with homicides up over 80%, according to the Washington Times. Not to be outdone by the epic failure of Minneapolis, the results in NYC are equally bleak, as the city is on pace to record 400 homicides in a year for the first time since 2012, according to The New York Post. Chicago has dozens of shootings every weekend. Portland is a rats nest of communism, anarchism, and violence. Defund the Police is dangerous for this country and has been a disaster everywhere it has been implemented.
From Seattle to New York City, Democrats running some of our country’s largest metro areas have uniformly abandoned the rule of law for the rule of the mob. The media runs interference for these criminal politicians by standing in front of burning businesses while “reporting” on “mostly peaceful protests.” The politicians themselves attempted for months to manipulate the narrative. Read more here.