Defunding the Police Means More Crime

by C. Mitchell Shaw

As BLM and other Marxist groups call for cities and states across America to “Defund the Police,” liberal media repeat and reinforce the call and far left politicians listen and act. On March 11, the British publication The Guardian published an online article about the “more than 20 major cities” in America that “have reduced police budgets in some form” and the “activists [that] are fighting to ensure that is only the start.”

The idea of defunding police departments dates back to the late 1960s when Fred Hampton, the leader of the Illinois branch of the communist Black Panther Party, promoted the idea as part of “decentralization” — a buzzword for “community control” of police departments and their budgets. As the War on Cops has escalated in the past few years and BLM and other radical groups have continued to push the idea of defunding or even outright abolishing police, the anti-police defunding movement has gained the approval of mainstream media and leftist politicians. What was once rightly considered a crazy idea by the radical fringe is now being postulated as realistic policy in cities across America.

But make no mistake: The idea — birthed in the mind of a Communist agitator and activist — is still as Marxist and anti-America as it was in 1969. And just as dangerous. “Defund” and “Abolish” are two sides of the same Marxist, anti-police coin — or perhaps more accurately, they are two faces of the same vice being used to squeeze civilization to the breaking point.

What Defunding Really Means

Leftist media and leftist policy organizations are acting as accomplices of the anti-police Marxist activists in promoting this dangerous idea. And a perusal of their claims shows that they are taking their talking points from the same page of the same book. For example, the left-leaning Brookings Institution published an online article in June 2020 under the headline, “What does ‘defund the police’ mean and does it have merit?” That article begins by offering the following definition:

“Defund the police” means reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies funded by the local municipality. That’s it. It’s that simple.

In March of this year, CBS News published an online article under a headline that referred to headlines, “‘Defund the police’ made headlines. What does it look like now?” It offered an almost verbatim definition:

At its most basic, “defund the police” means reallocating money from policing to other agencies funded by local municipalities.

That those two statements are iterations of the same idea from the same mind is self-evident. It is readily apparent that there is a top-down direction to the idea of cutting police budgets all the way to (and deep into) the bone. If that were not the case, influential voices would not be giving credence to such lunacy.

Where it becomes murky is in the way different advocates spin the facts. The piece by Brookings claims that “defund does not mean abolish policing,” adding, “And, even some who say abolish, do not necessarily mean to do away with law enforcement altogether.” But the piece by CBS acknowledges that “advocates are split on the question of how far it should go: whether to reduce funding and reform some aspects of policing, or completely abolish police forces as we know them.”

The New York Times published an online article in April under the headline, “As New Police Reform Laws Sweep Across the U.S., Some Ask: Are They Enough?” The answer for the radical anti-cop crowd is a resounding “No!” That article addresses the “police reforms” already put in place in states across America and says, “States have passed over 140 police oversight bills since the killing of George Floyd, increasing accountability and overhauling rules on the use of force. But the calls for change continue.”

And Mariame Kaba (who is described in her byline as “an organizer against criminalization”) wrote a candid op-ed piece published by the New York Times in June 2020 (one week before Brookings denied that anyone wants to abolish the police) entitled, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police: Because reform won’t happen.” In it, Kaba wrote, “Enough. We can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police.”

In this, Kaba echoes BLM’s Marxist demand for defunding police found on the official website for BLM. That statement begins, “Enough is enough” And goes on to call for “an end to the systemic racism that allows this culture of corruption to go unchecked and our lives to be taken.” It also takes its definition of “defund the police” from the same page of the same book referenced above, saying, “We call for a national defunding of police. We demand investment in our communities and the resources to ensure Black people not only survive, but thrive.”

The Failed Experiment

Of course, left completely out of the equation is the relevant question of exactly how black Americans are going to be able to “not only survive, but thrive” in communities wracked by violent black-on-black crime. BLM, the liberal media, and pandering politicians pretend to be ignorant of what every cop in any city of any size knows to be true: Without cops — and without adequate funding for police departments — violent crime (barely kept in check now) would quickly reach epidemic levels. And it would be black people who would pay the highest price for this Marxist social experiment in defunding or outright abolishing police.

The Guardian article from March 11 — mentioned in the first paragraph of this article — praises the activists and politicians in more than 20 American cities who have slashed police budgets. It also makes the point that “activists are fighting to ensure that is only the start.” The article reports in glowing joy about the “paradigm shift” that led those cities to cut nearly a billion dollars from police budgets, stating, “In some cases, the cuts came from leaving vacant positions unfilled or moving the accounting of certain police functions to other agencies — changes that would probably have minimal immediate impact.”

As if fewer cops — caused by unfilled vacancies — and the transfer of police functions to other agencies — not trained, equipped, or able to adequately carry out those functions — could possibly be justified simply because doing so “would probably have minimal immediate impact.” That is the very definition of short-term thinking. Moreover, the sharp rise in crime — including violent crime — over the past year shows that the “immediate impact” of defunding and de-policing has been anything but “minimal.”

In fact, an article by the New York Times in late May addresses that very issue and the solution that some of the cities that slashed police budgets are now applying to rectify the problem. Spoiler alert: They are moving to restore those budgets and hire more cops. According to the article, “Los Angeles, like other cities across the nation, is facing a rise in gun violence. And the police budget is growing.”

Under the headline, “A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime,” the Times laments that the dream is incomplete. Even after all of the success of the anti-police crowd and ignoring of the promises of a great Utopia where everyone just learns to get along without racist, evil cops, people worried about rising crime rates are chomping at the bit to return to normalcy. And that means funding police departments to hire and train cops to fight crime.

From that article:

Now, a year after Mr. Floyd’s death, Los Angeles and other American cities face a surge in violent crime amid pandemic despair and a flood of new guns onto the streets. The surge is prompting cities whose leaders embraced the values of the movement last year to reassess how far they are willing to go to reimagine public safety and divert money away from the police and toward social services.

And:

A year after streets echoed with calls to “defund” law enforcement and city leaders embraced the message by agreeing to take $150 million away from the Los Angeles Police Department, or about 8 percent of the department’s budget, the city last week agreed to increase the police budget to allow the department to hire about 250 officers. The increase essentially restores the cuts that followed the protests.

The Marxist social experiment cost Los Angeles police “more than a decade of progress,” according to Chief Michel Moore of the Los Angeles Police Department. After steady and significant declines in crime for many years — due at least in part to proactive policing — crime has been on a sharp uptick since the police budget was cut. The city has seen a tidal wave of illegal guns in the streets and murder is up a whopping 36 percent.

And Los Angeles is not an anomaly. On the opposite coast, New York City has seen a 45-percent increase in murders and a corresponding uptick in other crimes. Smaller cities are seeing similar patterns. Louisville, for instance, saw 173 murders last year. That was a record number for the city. But this year, it is already on track to break that record.

It is a simple equation: Fewer cops fighting crime means more crime. The experiment has been tried and has been a failure. Only one group stands to lose by putting more cops back on the streets of America — the Marxist leftists who hope to create anarchy for the purpose of toppling the existing order and building on top of its smoldering ruins a new Marxist order controlled by themselves.