Election of Trump, defeat of progressive DAs proves defund the police movement was a failure

In the wake of George Floyd’s overdose death blamed on a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, cities across the country, in an effort to placate Black Lives Matter and its followers, engaged in the ill-advised policy of defunding the police. As the November election showed, that policy has been rejected–and loudly–by a majority of voters. 

In a piece published in The Daily Signal, Craig Floyd, the founding CEO of Citizens Behind the Badge, calls the movement “an abject failure.” 

We have repeatedly seen leftist politicians and their media mouthpieces claim that “crime is down,” citing FBI crime data while ignoring the more accurate Crime Victimization Survey. The latter has shown that the FBI statistics don’t represent what is really going on in the country since those statistics only count crimes reported to police. According to NCVS, 60 percent of violent crimes and 70 percent of property crimes are not reported to the police, according to a recent piece in Law Enforcement Today. 

Frankly put, the November election of Donald Trump supports the fact that Americans are sick and tired of Democrats coddling criminals while demonizing the police. As Floyd points out, the damage has been done, and it will take years to undo it. 

When Trump pole-axed Kamala Harris in November, it should have dealt a “knockout blow” to the defund movement since Harris was one of its first supporters. Harris supported the rioters arrested in Minneapolis in the wake of Floyd’s death and asked followers to donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund to bail out those arrested. 

Harris, being the politician she is, wouldn’t come right out and suggest defunding the police. Instead, she used more colorful language, suggesting the “reimagining” of policing. In June 2020, she said, “For too long, the status quo thinking has been: You get more safety by putting more cops on the street–well, that’s wrong.” 

Donald Trump was always known as a “law and order” president, and on the campaign trail, he promised to restore civility and the rule of law to the country. Trump directly took on the defund movement, saying, “There won’t be defunding, there won’t be dismantling of our police, and there is not going to be any disbanding of our police.” 

Harris wasn’t the only one who paid an electoral price for her pro-criminal stances. Floyd notes in his piece that “twelve out of 25 George Soros-linked progressive, soft-on-crime local district attorneys across the U.S. were either defeated or recalled.” Many of those took place in solid blue jurisdictions. 

Among the losers was Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, one of the worst offenders in coddling criminals and ignoring the rule of law. Among Gascon’s “greatest hits” was directing his prosecutors not to add sentencing “enhancements” to suspects. He also pushed for bail reform by ending cash bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. For his trouble, Gascon was shown the door after one four-year term. He lost by 24 points to Nathan Hochman, a tough-on-crime opponent. 

Also in California, voters overwhelmingly approved Prop 36, which lengthens jail and prison sentences for drug and theft convictions. 

When cities nationwide kowtowed to radical activists, public safety was the sacrificial lamb. Hundreds of millions of dollars were cut from police budgets. Politicians enacted “accountability laws” that, in some cases, removed qualified immunity from police officers acting in their official capacity. Cities and towns began bleeding police officers, with some taking early retirement and others simply leaving the profession altogether. 

Between 2019 and 2021, the number of full-time state and local officers dropped by 5.3%, meaning nearly 37,000 fewer officers were protecting their communities. Some agencies have yet to recover. As a result, police response times slowed, and some agencies stopped responding to crimes reported after the fact. In 2020, homicides rose by 29.4%, the most significant single-year increase in over 100 years, Floyd wrote. 

Another casualty of the “defund” movement was the removal of school resource officers, a cause championed by far-left Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who ironically represents a state where 20 first-graders were killed in a school shooting in 2012. At the same time, six adult staff members were also killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Another result of soft-on-crime policies is an explosion in shoplifting and organized retail theft. While these are sometimes called “victimless” crimes, retail theft is passed on to consumers through higher prices. Moreover, assaults on retail employees have also increased, with a recent survey showing that 40% of retail employees would quit their jobs next year out of “personal safety concerns.” 

In Washington, D.C., carjackings nearly doubled in 2023, with the average age of those arrested being 15, part of a nationwide trend of an explosion in youth crime. 

Some cities, such as Denver, Floyd notes, have cut their law enforcement budgets to shift money to assist illegal aliens coming into their cities. Meanwhile, organized violent gangs from Central and South America are wreaking havoc in communities from Denver to New York. 

Fortunately, some communities have realized that reducing police budgets was a fool’s errand. Many are restoring funding to police departments and are reversing ill-advised progressive policies. In Minneapolis, for example, the city cut its police budget by $8 million in 2020 only to reverse course in 2022 and add $7 million back. 

Oregon, which foolishly decriminalized hard drugs in 2021, saw an explosion in overdoses and homelessness and decided earlier this year to end that failed experiment. 

One benefit to the tamping down of anti-police rhetoric is attacks on police officers have decreased, with the Fraternal Order of Police saying that the number of officers shot this year (301 as of Oct. 31) was 7% less than at the same time last year. Also, unprovoked ambush-style shootings of police officers are looking to be nearly 40% lower than in 2023, with 71 officers dying in such attacks this year. To be clear, even one officer killed in the line of duty is one too many, but at least the numbers are trending in the right direction–finally. 

While the defeat of DAs such as Gascon and others is a step in the right direction, much remains to be done. As Floyd points out, the law enforcement profession has “lost too many talented and experienced law enforcement officers.” It will take years to replace the talent lost due to some boneheaded idea by politicians seeking to appease the mob. Unfortunately, there are still many anti-police and pro-criminal DAs in place. Alvin Bragg in Manhattan comes to mind. 

The election of Donald Trump as president signals that things are trending in a positive direction. Police officers on the federal, state, and local levels have watched in horror as our country has been invaded by illegal aliens who, in many cases, bring violent criminal backgrounds with them. 

As current and former law enforcement officers, the current trend to more of a pro-police, anti-criminal environment is welcome. The defund the police experiment can be relegated to the trash heap where it belongs. As Floyd closed, “A well-funded and fully staffed police force is essential to keeping America safe.” 

Amen to that!