Residents in small cities and towns across the United States are suffering from the unintended consequences of the “defund the police” movement.
In these cities, there is a public safety crisis playing out. Police morale is down, budgets have been slashed, and some crimes, such as retail theft, have fallen off the radar.
Between 2019 and 2020, the U.S. recorded its highest increase in the national homicide rate in modern history. In 2021,12 cities broke their annual homicide records. The fallout from the defund the police movement has been reported in large cities such as New York and Los Angeles, but residents in less populated areas have also been affected.
DEMOCRATS HAUNTED BY CALLS TO DEFUND THE POLICE
In Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb with a population of around 78,000, police announced they will start to triage police responses to crime.
Evanston was among the cities that slashed their police budgets, cutting it by 5.36% in 2021 following George Floyd’s murder.
“Just because we haven’t had a George Floyd or a Breonna Taylor doesn’t mean what we have is working,” Evanston Alderwoman Cicely Fleming told the Daily Northwestern.
A year later, the city restored police funding, but by then, it was too little, too late. The force, dogged with low officer morale and retention rates, is operating at a reduced capacity, which is hurting residents.
The department is now 26 officers short of its 154-member force. The detective bureau has been slashed almost in half from 22 in 2019. The department is reassigning five members of its community policing unit to patrol for the next couple of months. Detectives will only focus on violent crimes, and although officers will still respond to 911 calls, the follow-ups will be different. The reduced force will also limit investigations into incidents involving stolen vehicles and burglaries.
“The defund movement definitely had a negative effect on our morale and our ability to retain our employees,” Ryan Glew, the police public information officer told the Wall Street Journal.
A survey of nearly 200 police departments by the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit think tank, shows a 45% increase in the retirement rate and a nearly 20% increase in resignations in 2020-2021 compared to the previous year.
“Let’s be honest, the conversation nationally has been very, very much questioning police authority, what they do, how they do it,” PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler said. “So, if you wake up every day and that’s what you hear, it takes its toll.”
Police departments in Indiana, Texas, Massachusetts, and Virginia have been trying to figure out how to remedy the anti-police sentiment and protect their residents.
In Roanoke, Virginia, which reported a 400% increase in crimes last year, Mayor Sherman Lea said residents told him they wanted more officers in their community. The city approved a budget to increase pay for officers and hire more people, but the response hasn’t been what they had hoped.
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In Watertown, Massachusetts, Police Chief Michael Lawn turned to social media to find new police recruits, but only six people attended one event, and only two took the civil service test. It was one of the suburban Boston town’s lowest turnouts in history.
“This job has changed,” he told WGBH News. “Nobody wants this job anymore.”
