In several large cities over the last year, police budgets were dramatically cut as calls to ‘defund the police’ spread after the killing of George Floyd.
In Washington DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser and the City Council cut the police budget by $15 M last year, only to see homicides spike in 2020 and are on track so far this year to reach the highest level in 16 years. Bowser has now reversed course and has proposed a budget to hire 170 additional officers over the next two years and has offered unlimited overtime immediately to combat the crime spike.
This is not rocket science: you cut law enforcement, you get an increase in crime. Why have had so many big city mayors not been able to see this coming?
Every profession will have bad actors and, unfortunately, the police are no different. When that happens, we have to hold them to a higher standard because of the unique status that they hold. Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd, was tried and convicted and will spend most of the rest of his life in prison. That is the way it should be—was done. That is not to minimize the death of Floyd, but to say that when things are wrong, you address the wrong. To defund law enforcement across the board, everywhere gets predictable results that, unfortunately, the people in large cities are now paying for.
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