Members of a pro-law enforcement activist group painted a “Back the Blue” design outside a police station in Tampa, Florida, over the weekend.
“We want to make sure that they know just because we aren’t the loudest doesn’t mean we aren’t there and in numbers. There’s a huge force,” Kelli Campbell, a group organizer, told local television station FOX 13. “Our Back the Blue Florida group has 5,000 members in it, and that’s just a piece of the puzzle, of course.”
Campbell said the group received “verbal” approval from the city to paint the street art but did not go through the entire permit application process.
“Any tribute to honor their service is welcome,” a spokesperson for the mayor’s office told the station. “It’s unfortunate they didn’t see the permitting process through so that our community could participate in showing their appreciation for the brave men and women that service our residents every day.”
Since the Memorial Day death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in police custody, activists, politicians, and athletes have demanded that sweeping reforms be implemented in local police departments across the nation.
Some have suggested that police departments are so irreparably discriminatory toward minorities that they need to be fully defunded, dismantled, and replaced with a system that is more equitable for all people.
Police unions, congressional Republicans, and President Trump have pushed back on these assertions, calling a scale-down in police funding a danger to the public and representative of an anti-American agenda by some on the political Left.
Trump has attempted to tie presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden to the so-called “defund the police” movement.
“The radical politicians are waging war on innocent Americans,” Trump said last month. “If that’s what you want for a country, you probably have to vote for Sleepy Joe Biden because he doesn’t know what’s happening, but you are not going to have that with me.”
In June, Biden said he opposes defunding the police.
In several major cities where violent crimes have increased since the beginning of the summer, local city councils or other elected leaders have slashed funding to police departments and vowed to dedicate resources to social programs.
“We’re committed to seeing a shift of funding to youth services, to social services. That will happen literally in the course of the next three weeks, but I’m not going to go into detail because it is subject to negotiation, and we want to figure out what makes sense,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio while announcing more than $1 billion in cuts to the New York Police Department.
New York and cities like it have seen major increases in police force retirements and resignations since the summer began, a trend police officials attribute to weakening morale in the greater law enforcement community.
“Police work is essential work, service-driven work, and my fear is that the current environment is just so toxic that those quality, idealistic, service-driven people that we desperately need to fill these vacancy roles in law enforcement are going to look elsewhere,” said Police Chief Jeff Tate of the department in Shakopee, just outside Minnesota.
Trump, who has labeled Black Lives Matter as a movement with a “hateful message,” has also pledged to stand up for police if elected to a second term in the White House.
“We’re not defunding the police. In fact, we’re going the opposite route,” Trump said early last month. “We’re going to have stronger police forces.”
