“Defund the police,” which became a political rallying cry that brought the Democratic base out on the streets this summer, has turned into a major liability, with some party members now calling for an end to the movement altogether.
The radical proposal, with proponents arguing for a spectrum of policies ranging from fewer dollars allocated to law enforcement to the abolition of police departments altogether, gained steam in the wake of George Floyd’s death in May. Once relegated to extremist left-wing magazines or college campuses, the policy debate quickly entered the mainstream, earning favorable coverage about its merits in outlets like the New York Times and the Atlantic.
Support for the “defunding the police” saw an increase in support among those with college degrees living in cities, a critical Democratic constituency, with nearly 20% supporting the measure at one point this summer. Elite support transitioned into material policy changes, with city governments in places like Minneapolis voting to abolish its police department altogether.
That effort slowly died off after city council members neglected to follow up on an actual plan to disband the Minneapolis Police Department, an undertaking that would have been one of the most complicated and politically risky in recent city history. A vote on the city budget will take place this month, however, with several city council members still pushing for a slash to the police department’s funding by millions of dollars.
“I think the initial announcement created a certain level of confusion from residents at a time when the city really needed that stability,” said Mayor Jacob Frey in September, who himself never backed disbanding the city’s police force. “I also think that the declaration itself meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people — and that included a healthy share of activists that were anticipating abolition.”
But the damage of the nearly constant demonization of the police from lawmakers in the city, as well as directives to pull back from issuing arrests, has led to a massive spike in crime in the city. Carjackings have skyrocketed 537% this year, and homicides and shootings increased by 64% in November in comparison to 2019.
“The numbers are staggering,” said police spokesman John Elder. “It defies all civility and any shred of common human decency.”
The Los Angeles city government followed Minneapolis’s model, passing a measure on Nov. 3 prohibiting 10% of any unused money in the budget to be allocated towards the police or prisons. In July, the city council slashed the Los Angeles Police Department’s budget by $150 million and promised to reduce the police force by 200 officers by 2021.
In the eyes of critics, the results were nothing less than expected. Los Angeles reached 300 homicides this year, the highest in a decade. Aggravated assaults are reaching yearslong highs as shootings saw an increase of 32%.
Where cities like Minneapolis and Los Angeles faced rising crime, the GOP saw an opportunity. For months leading up to Election Day, Republican candidates and super PACs hammered airwaves accusing Democratic lawmakers of supporting extremist anti-policing measures touted by those such as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar. Suburban voters were inundated with video footage of the summer riots when businesses suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
The results were a nearly unequivocal success: Dozens of down-ballot Republicans outperformed virtually every poll and shrunk the Democratic majority in the House to their lowest levels since the 19th century. Many Democrats who lost their races, or found themselves in an unexpectedly close one, lashed out against party leadership in the days following the election.
“The number one concern that people brought to me in my race, that I barely won, was defunding the police,” said Virginia Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger on a House member call with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “And I’ve heard from colleagues who say, ‘Oh, it’s the language of the streets, we should respect that.’ We’re in Congress. We are professionals. We are supposed to talk about things in the way where we mean what we are talking about. If we don’t mean we should defund the police, we shouldn’t say that.”
Former President Barack Obama took notice and criticized activists within his party for straying far outside mainstream politics.
“I guess you can use a snappy slogan like ‘defund the police,’ but, you know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done,” he said in a recent interview.
But the pleadings from Democrats have only exposed deeper rifts within the party. After Sen. Joe Manchin expressed his opposition to the “defund the police” movement in an interview with the Washington Examiner, he earned a snarky retort from AOC on Twitter, where she posted a picture of herself glaring at the West Virginia Democrat. That tweet has since been deleted.
Omar took on Obama’s comments directly, asserting that “[defunding the police] is not a slogan but a police demand. And centering the demand for equitable investments and budgets for communities across the country gets us progress and safety.”
Despite many Democrats trying to distance themselves from the movement as much as possible, left-wing lawmakers are pushing ahead with significant reform efforts — many of which look awfully similar to the kind of defunding measures that scared voters away from the Democratic Party, to begin with.
In an interview with the Intercept released Monday, Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley said she plans to move ahead with bills to “demilitarize police, redirect funding, and end the federal death penalty.”
“We should not be taking the bait about this being something that is third-rail or polarizing,” she said. “These are really just contrived narratives that are pushed as some sort of intimidation and scare tactic.”
