Cities across the U.S. are starting to retreat from their position to defund the police after experiencing a spike in murders, violent crime, and decrease in police officers. Austin, Texas is the latest city to go back on their defund the police stance. Sparked by the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the Defund the Police movement was a call throughout the country to reallocate money from law enforcement agencies by local and state governments. Newell spoke with Fred Lucas, Correspondent for the Daily Signal, on how cities like Austin have come full circle on the movement.
“We've seen this movement across the country in a number of different jurisdictions. Is there anything that makes Austin different?” Newell asked.
“A lot of law enforcement people I talked to suggested that Austin may be the biggest cautionary tale,” Lucas said. “We did see this in over 20 jurisdictions across the country that had massive cuts to their police budgets. In Austin, they cut the police budget by more than a third and they saw the homicide rate just skyrocket. Over one year's time, the city reached a 37 year high for homicides… there are a lot of people in law enforcement in the Austin area that
believed this is a direct correlation to defunding the police, though there's always the question of whether correlation equals causation. Another thing about Austin that stands out is a referendum in the city to lock in a certain amount of funding for police going forward. The city council, after seeing the wreckage caused by slashing their police budget, reversed it themselves and restored most of the funding.”
“Austin is still having recruitment problems,” Newell said. “Spokane, Washington actually has a billboard, trying to recruit officers from Austin to Spokane and luring them with a $15,000 signing bonus.”
“Yes, Spokane and a few places outside of Portland are recruiting officers from other cities since Portland defunded their police department. There are places where police officers just do not feel welcomed, do not feel they're going to be getting the support they need from either their departments or from their city governments. Just like any other profession, you're going to go where you're going to be treated decently,” Lucas said.
“A new police chief has been named in Austin, but immediately upon his confirmation, he announced that due to low staffing, the department will no longer respond to calls of burglary, vandalism, and other thefts… there are a number of property crimes that they're not going to respond to. I guess you're just going to report them on the phone and they'll take the report over the phone?” Newell wondered.
“Yeah and that is unfortunate. I spoke with an Austin Police spokesperson who said the department is prioritizing violent crime, or crime in action. Their police budget is being built back up for the next fiscal year, but the resources still aren't really there. The manpower is not there, so there's only so much that can be done. I think a very vocal minority of citizens pretty much had their way and pushed the Austin City Council to move a certain way and slash the police budget. Maybe the majority of the city has pushed back on this and with the sense that not every call is going to be responded to at a time when crime overall is increasing in Austin, that’s going to hit people a lot,” Lucas said.
