Police budget today
In 2020 many cities cut down police budgets a lot.[1] The consequences of that we covered in our last post, but we did not touch the major effect – the crime rate in the US. In a nutshell, the crime rate of all kinds skyrocketed[2] after police got defunded.
What was the government’s
response to it?
Among the major
politicians from both parties the idea of defunding the police was unpopular in
the beginning or it became unpopular soon after the massive riots occurred in
the big cities. Joe Biden said that he is totally against of the idea and will
support the idea of funding the police with everything they reasonably need.[3]
As we learned in our
previous post many cities decided to cut down budgets drastically but in 2021 many
started to restore them despite the fact that liberals stood their ground with
the point that just defunding the police will not do any good without establishing
and investing in social services. The liberals have their point but why would you
reinvent something when you can reform something that you already have. That was
a sensible response of many city councils who recovered the police budget. However
not all the politicians followed the people’s request. For example, Bill De Blasio
who was a long serving mayor for New York was opposing the idea of funding the
police properly and cut its budget on 20% in 2020.[4]
This was really unpopular, and the crime rate was up 22% in Big Apple.[5]
Anyway, he got out of office in 2022 with less than 35% approval rating[6]
and the new mayor who is a former police captain pledged that he will do anything
to keep the New Yorkers safe and he plans to raise the police budget.[7]
The cities like Los
Angeles, Austin, Baltimore, and others who reduced the police budget in 2020
reported an increase in it in 2021.[8]
Even House passed laws on increasing local police budgets and they are under
consideration by Senate now.[9]
To sum up, the police
and their budgets are brought back. Nobody wants to live without protection and
the idea proved to be not only unpopular but ineffective, crime rate all over
the United States increased. Another interesting topic which we are going to
cover further is law and order and police funding in politics. How both parties
want to capitalize on it?
[1] https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6973381594270521117/2536141467077454290?hl=ru
[2] https://www.statista.com/topics/2153/crime-in-the-united-states/#dossierContents__outerWrapper
[3] https://twitter.com/CBSEveningNews/status/1270130912081129472
[4] https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/487-20/in-face-an-economic-crisis-mayor-de-blasio-budget-prioritizes-safety-police
[5] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/pr0603/nypd-citywide-crime-statistics-may-2021
[6] https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2021/06/11/bill-de-blasio-approval-ratings-june-2021-ny1-ipsos-poll
[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/nyregion/budget-adams-police-nyc.html
[8] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/cities-vowed-2020-cut-police-funding-budgets-expanded-2021-rcna9864
[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/us/politics/house-passes-police-funding-bills.html
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