Kerby Anderson

Crime is dramatically increasing in cities where police department funding has been reduced. That shouldn’t come as a big surprise and is well documented in a commentary that “Violent Crimes Spike in Cities That Defunded the Police.” More than 20 major cities have slashed their police budgets. Let’s look at some examples.

Murders in Portland tripled from July 2020 to February 2021. This took place after “city commissioners voted to cut nearly $16 million from the police budget in response to complaints about police force and racial injustice.”

Homicide rates in Oakland, California spiked dramatically after city leaders set as their goal to cut the police budget in half. For example, homicide rose 314 percent compared to the same time last year, while firearm assaults rose by 113 percent.

In New York City, the city council slashed $1 billion from the police budget last summer. They have already seen 76 murders this year and 220 reported shootings.

Minneapolis has been in the news ever since George Floyd died in police custody. The city council diverted more than a million dollars from the police department budget to the Office of Violence Prevention and another $8 million to violence prevention programs.

Chicago has had a surge in gun crimes after the Cook County Board of Commissioners voted to “redirect money from arresting people and locking them up to housing, health care, and job creation.” Homicides were up 33 percent in the first three months of this year compared to last year.

None of these sobering statistics should come as a surprise. Months ago, I predicted there would be a crime spike in cities that cut law enforcement budgets.