Last month, Los Angeles officials voted to refund the police by $36 mission after a raging uptick in crime. The vote passed 12-0, including support from Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was a major advocate of defund the police measures during last year’s protests. The money will be distributed to the Los Angeles Police Department, Long Beach Police Department, and Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. While the city council voted last July to slash the LAPD budget by $150 million, Mayor Garcetti is now proposing a three percent increase, providing the LAPD with $1.76 billion from the previous $1.7 billion.
According to recent LAPD crime statistics, shootings have been up 80% compared to the same period last year, homicides are up 28%, aggravated assaults have increased by 14%, and car theft has spiked 24%. A wave of retirements, resignations, and relocations also contributed to the stress of rising crime. With the most recent budget proposal, Mayor Garcetti shared that the department would need to hire more officers. While they expect to have about 9,489 officers by the end of June, the 2021 budget would support a force of 9,750 officers.
Mayor Garcetti even shared that his 2021 policing budget was based on last year’s budget, prior to the cuts that were made. The radical left is completely trying to reverse their dismantlement of law enforcement and support of nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing last year. They bent a knee to the social justice warriors and Black Lives Matter advocates who pressured political officials all year. They are only now realizing that fewer officers only result in more crime. Poor and minority neighborhoods paid the price.
Some anti-police activists have ignored the anti-law enforcement atmosphere, including Albert Corado who was running for a seat on City Council. He said he was “angry but not surprised” by Mayor Garcetti’s move to refund the police, but that he has been calling for an abolishment of the police for 3 years now and wants to see the LAPD completely dismantled.
But Cindy Cleghorn, a member of the Sunland Tujunga Neighborhood Council, talked about the days with less policing patrol support. She said gang members harassed and assaulted residents in broad daylight and have been pushing for more police support in the area. “We have good officers here. They just need more support,” she said.
In Mayor Garcetti’s recent “justice plan,” he also includes a $24 million guaranteed basic income plan and $1 billion to tackle the city’s raging homelessness problem. The increased funding for police – 53 million – will be used for ongoing training for officers and bringing more officers into the force.
Giving law enforcement officials the resources they need to fight crime is so mind-bogglingly simple you’d think the radical left would’ve figured it out by now. Instead, they’d rather dismantle law enforcement as a whole and claim that it “fights justice” or is a way to confront “systemic racism” without providing evidence behind the cause. The only thing “defund the police” has done is destroy communities and ruin the livelihoods of small business owners nationwide. It was the wave of violence American citizens never asked for.
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