After pushing “Defund the Police” and other soft-on-crime policies, Democrats are realizing these agenda items are not only woefully unpopular with voters but are resulting in skyrocketing crime rates.
President Joe Biden was supposed to travel to Pennsylvania in July to advocate for a plan to spend $37 billion on hiring more police officers before contracting COVID-19. The budget proposals from the president were supposed to include $13 billion to hire and train 100,000 police officers.
Democrat-run cities have more homicides per capita, according to data from WalletHub. The city’s 50 most populous cities saw crime rise by 18% in the two years since 2020, according to the poll. Violent crime hit record highs in Atlanta, Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington in 2021, according to an analysis from Fox News.
Some, however, are doubling down. George Soros, the billionaire notorious for pouring money into efforts to elect left-wing District Attorneys, defended his actions in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday. Soros wrote that “[he has] no intention of stopping” his support of left-wing candidates for prosecutor following the recall of Soros-funded San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin. (RELATED: ‘An Alternative Universe’: Fox News Guest Rips Soros Op-Ed Backing Leftist DAs)
When George Floyd died in police custody after a Minneapolis police officer stood on his neck for over 8 minutes in May 2020, many left-wing activists popularized the slogan “defund the police” in response to what they saw as racial discrimination in the way police enforced the law.
However, most Americans seemed to immediately sour on the left-wing policies, with only 16% of Americans saying they actually want to defund the police, according to a June 2020 YouGov poll. Across the nation, cities are reversing course on their defund the police craze, as murders increased at a record rate of 5.6% in the year from 2020 to 2021 according to data from the FBI. (RELATED: Rep. Ayanna Pressley Has Continued To Spend Thousands Of Taxpayers Dollars On Private Security, House Records Show)
Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan to move funding from the New York police department in June 2020. This, despite the fact that more than half of registered New York voters oppose slashing police budgets, as a Siena College poll released in June 2020 revealed. In November 2021, the voters made their voices heard, voting in Eric Adams, who campaigned on reducing crime in New York City, as mayor of the city. In February, Adams slashed funding to most city agencies but refused to cut funding to police departments. (RELATED: Defund Police Movement To Blame For Increased Murders Of Black Americans, Experts Say)
Eric Adams Wins NYC Mayoral Election https://t.co/487DKXQQiM
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 3, 2021
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) cut $150 million, amounting to 8% of its budget in 2020. The LAPD restored its original budget a year later, following a dramatic rise in violent crime.
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
The Minneapolis City Council redirected $7.7 million of funds from its police department in December 2020. About a year later, the city restored its original budget following an increase in violent crime in the city.
San Francisco, California cut its police budget by $120 million in 2020. Democratic Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in December 2021 after an increase in crime and overdose rates. In June of this year, San Francisco Mayor London Breed introduced a $13.95 billion city budget proposal to bolster police staffing, surrounded by an assembly of police officers. (RELATED: Police Departments Say Budget Cuts Are The Reason They’ve Been Unable To Hire New Officers)
Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot slashed the city’s 2021 police budget by $80 million, only to reverse course on this later, adding $200 million to the city’s police budget in September. In Washington D.C., after proposing a 6% budget cut for the city’s police department, Mayor Bowser is proposing a $19.5 billion budget that would increase the police force by more than 400 officers over the next 9 years.
WATCH: Lori Lightfoot goes absolutely berserk after a reporter questions her about Chicago’s rising crime rates pic.twitter.com/IJYGNDnF1l
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 28, 2022
Left-wing prosecutors in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia and San Francisco have embraced soft-on-crime policies such as not charging shoplifters or releasing violent felons. These District Attorneys are largely funded by Soros-backed Super PACs, according to an analysis by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Even the most left-wing city leaders are realizing their crime policies aren’t working, and that voters will make their discontent with them known at the polls. But the belligerence on the issue of individuals like Soros shows that the Left still has a lot of work to do in distancing itself from its dalliance with the anti-police movement.
