Cities Pushing to 'Defund the Police' Are Struggling with Record-High Crime Rates
Liberal cities are hit with dramatic rise in violent crimes after cutting police funding
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Liberal cities that backed the push to "defund the police" are now struggling with record-high violent crime rates, according to reports.
New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and other Democrat strongholds are facing a dramatic rise in violence.
The soaring crime rate is forcing city leaders to reevaluate their stance on defunding the police.
Following the death of George Floyd last year, far-left activists took to the streets and demanded that police budgets were slashed so the money could be used to fund other community services.
In response, police departments across the U.S. had their budgets severely reduced, The New York Times (NYT) reported.
According to the NYT, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) lost 8% of its budget, or $150 million, in 2020.
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The Minneapolis Police Department’s and the Metropolitan Police Department’s budgets were cut by $7.7 million and $15 million, respectively, according to The Daily Caller.
Homicides grew by 45% in New York and 36% in Los Angeles last year, according to the NYT.
The trend can be observed in smaller cities, too. Louisville, for instance, saw a record-high number of murders at 173 homicides last year.
The city is expected to exceed this number in 2021, according to the NYT.
A year after the murder of George Floyd, Los Angeles and other American cities are facing a surge in violent crime, forcing cities whose leaders embraced the idea of police reform to reassess how far they are willing to go to reimagine public safety. https://t.co/RMzadl6Pib
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 23, 2021
Los Angeles City Council reversed its 2020 decision mid-May 2021, when it approved a boost in LAPD’s funding, essentially restoring the department’s original budget.
The LAPD is planning to use its increased budget for hiring additional 250 officers in 2021, the report says.
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Los Angeles and other cities that became part of the upward trend in violent crimes are likely to have a hard time going back to the pre-pandemic crime rates, given that the nation also witnessed a historic increase in firearm purchases in 2020, according to the report.
“We’ve lost more than a decade of progress,” Chief of the LAPD Michel Moore said, referring to 350 murders recorded in Los Angeles in 2020, the highest in the past ten years.
“I won’t argue that there is substandard housing, education, broken families, substance abuse, the systems that are racist and have systemic issues that have gone on for generations,” Moore said when asked about the “Defund The Police” movement.
“But the fix of that is not to eliminate policing.”
