Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us.
This post will focus on the crime numbers that have occurred in cities that actually thought that “defunding the police,” i.e. reducing the budget of their city police forces, was a good idea. The faulty theory of the politicians who enacted these police force reductions thought that having a gentler, softer approach to crime and violent criminals was a fantastic idea. That talking through the intentions and evil of criminal elements was actually possible if done with unarmed, trained facilitators and negotiators.
Nowhere in any of these cities was there a program that could actually be identified where moving budget resources from the police budget into these other types of sociology types of programs worked. Minneapolis, one of the first cities to defund and reduce the size of their police force, learned the hard way. Crime increased so much that city council members/politicians, actually voted to hire private, armed security guards to protect themselves. Since they defunded the police department so much they did not think the police could protect them. Never mind that the same situation they caused would leave their citizens unprotected, they made sure to take care of themselves.
But outside of Minneapolis, what have other “defund the police” cities encountered? Keep in mind as you review these numbers that a very very basic responsibility of government is to protect the lives and property of private citizens. After reviewing these numbers, ask yourself if the politicians in these cities are fulfilling this basic government tenet:
1) Homicides in Oakland, California are up 314% compared to the same time last year and firearms assaults are up 113%, quite possibly because of the millions of dollars the city politicians took from the city police department budget.
2)Murders in Minneapolis are up 46% between Dec. 11, 2020 through March 28 of this year, compared to the same period a year ago, a timeframe that saw the city politicians reduce the police budget by $9.1 million.
3) Murders have tripled in number in Portland from July, 2020 through February, 2021 after the city politicians gutted the Portland Police Department by $16 million.
4) 17 people have been killed in Portland in just the first two months of 2021, a 17 fold increase over the same period last year.
5) Murders in NYC have increased to 76 so far this year, up from 68 in the same time period last year.
6) This happened after the city politicians took $1 billion out of the police budget and assigned some of those funds to other city agencies ''best positioned to carry out the duties that have been previously assigned to the New York Police Department, like the Department of Education, the Department of Health & Mental Hygiene and the Department of Homeless Services." Obviously, moving the money to those agencies did NOT reduce the number of murders and increases in other NYC violent crime categories.
7) Los Angeles saw a 38% increase in murders in 2020 and a 28% increase in murders so far in 2021 after the city’s politicians took $150 million out of the city police force budget back in July.
8) In Austin, Texas, aggravated assaults in the city are up 26% vs. the same period in 2020, quite possibly because the city politicians lopped off a whopping one third of the annual police force budget.
Just the latest insanity from city politicians when it comes to the insane logic that cutting police budgets, without a proven replacement can actually reduce crime. Consider the idiocy and complete lack of logic from Austin council member Gregorio Casar: ''We are showing the country how reinvestments from the police budget can actually make many people’s lives so much better and safer. This will build momentum for changes to police budgets across the country.''
Mr. Casar: how your voters’ lives “so much better and safer" when aggravated assault in your city is up 26% in one year? Makes no sense. The numbers do not lie but as always, politicians do. Until there is a proven way to reduce crime and violence without always having the police intervene, why not lay low and actually protect the lives and property of citizens, a basic responsibility that big city mayors are failing miserably at?
Simple analogy: jumping out of an airplane, assuming that you can make a better parachute on the way down to Earth is not real wise. Would it not be better to build and test the parachute BEFORE jumping out of the plane? Wouldn't it be better, and safer, to test non-police crime intervention approaches before gutting your police force and unleashing violence on your citizens?
Simple analogy: jumping out of an airplane, assuming that you can make a better parachute on the way down to Earth is not real wise. Would it not be better to build and test the parachute BEFORE jumping out of the plane? Wouldn't it be better, and safer, to test non-police crime intervention approaches before gutting your police force and unleashing violence on your citizens?
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