By Steve Pomper
Every law enforcement officer and lucid mind in America knew the defund-the-police movement was foolish. There was no question it would not work and would make things worse. In a recent front-page story in the Epoch Times, reporter Cara Ding highlights mayors increasing their budgets for the nation’s three largest police departments: the New York Police Department (NYPD), the Chicago Police Department (CPD), and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
Yeah, we told them so—again. But I’m not sure that deserves a pat on the back. It was kind of like predicting the ocean is wet, Tom Brady will earn another Super Bowl ring, or Joe Biden is going to make another gaffe (oh, there he goes again). (Okay, the Brady comment may be wishful thinking, but if anyone can do it…).
All throughout 2020 and into 2021, leftist radicals in the community, academia, business, Hollywood, sports, and politics who tacitly or overtly supported BLM and Antifa, rhetorically or financially, hopped aboard the defund/abolish-the-police woke wagon.
Unfortunately, they’ve been too “successful.” Police departments in blue states and cities, large, mid-size, and small, have suffered unprecedented losses of officers. These losses have come from budget cuts, from their leaders’ dismally poor treatment, and vax mandates.
It’s important to remind people, the leftists’ much-exploited inciting of a 2020 incident, in just one police department in Minneapolis, was declared a referendum on “racist policing in America.”
According to FOX news reporting, “[George] Floyd’s death unleashed a racial reckoning on police tactics and social injustice.” It actually unleashed the creation of myths about “police tactics and social injustice.” Just because you don’t like how police work is done, doesn’t make it wrong.
However, after all the police budget cuts and evisceration of many of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies, critics have been unable to produce any legitimate evidence of systemic racism by police.
Even during the entire trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin (whatever you think about the legitimacy of his conviction), the prosecution didn’t produce one iota of evidence of racism. And no one can say the prosecution wasn’t diligent in its efforts to convict the man. If there were provable racism, they would have presented the proof. And they would have charged him with a “hate crime.”
Ding writes, “Chicago, which has the nation’s second-largest police department, is poised to pass its 2022 budget on Oct. 27. The spending plan boosts law enforcement funding by $200 million over last year’s $1.7 billion, and much of the increase will cover police salaries.”
As for the NYPD and LAPD, “New York passed its 2022 budget in June, increasing funding for the nation’s largest police force by $200 million. Los Angeles, which has the nation’s third-largest force, raised its police budget by $50 million.”
Adding Seattle to the list, long-time anti-police mayor, Jenny “summer-of-love” Durkan, doyenne of defunct CHAZ/CHOP Durkanistan, is now offering up to $25,000 to attract police candidates to the city. A city where many of its politicians hate cops as much or more than BLM and Antifa do.
After downplaying Seattle’s police staffing crisis just two weeks ago, Durkan just released a “Civil Emergency Order” to address the self-inflicted staffing catastrophe. Does she see the insult in using money the city saved from chasing out or firing officers to pay hiring bonuses?
Minneapolis, Baltimore, and Portland are also bucking the defund movement and increasing police budgets and incentifying police retention and recruiting.
Minneapolis is increasing efforts at police recruiting even while a ballot measure threatens to eliminate the current police department. And Portland, home of the second-worst mayor in America, Ted Wheeler, “stresses recruitment for a new gun violence unit” . There’s nothing “new” about the unit. Portland eliminated its old Gun Violence Prevention Unit last year. Now, they’re trying to restore it and having difficulty recruiting new members. Weird, eh?
Ding points out, the ability to increase budgets has come from the unprecedented “historic influx of federal money under the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan.” So, they broke it, and now they’re fleecing the taxpayers to fix it.
There was no mention of increased funding for responsible states and cities whose leaders didn’t defund the cops or allow the true insurrectionists, BLM and Antifa, to burn down their cities.
Even intensely anti-police Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who’s mandated cops get the vax whether or not they want or even need it, balks at defunding the police. While she’s fully bought into the false notion of police, as an institution, being racist, she said, “[Our residents] want more police—not less police. We are not a city—and will never be a city—that bows to those arguing for defunding.”
But, despite the rhetoric, last year Lightfoot slashed the CPD budget by 3.6 percent, cutting officers by 614. She sent the $1.3 million to social worker “first responders” instead.
New York’s worst mayor in America, Bill DeBlasio, infamously cut a billion dollars from the NYPD budget. A number, Ding points out, “was specifically asked for by New York activist organizations….”
Then nagging reality smacked the police “defunders” in the face. The cut was mitigated by the overtime budget that increased by 77 percent because of having to deploy officers to handle the decreases in officers and predictable increases in crime.
L.A., similar to the N.Y., cut the LAPD budget significantly. However, the city experienced swelling crime stats and wound up “logging $47 million more in overtime than budgeted…” the LA Times reported.
Yeah, we told you so gets old. But, hey… we told you so.