Tag: defund the police

Consequences of ‘Defund the Police’: Big City Police Departments Bleeding Staff, Unable to Recruit

Just the News

As crime rates climb across the nation, police departments in several major U.S. cities are facing a crisis, namely, the inability to recruit new police officers. As a result, staffing shortages have led to increased overtime, thinly spread patrols, and a rise in crime rates. 

Violent crimes remained higher during the first half of 2023 compared to the first half of 2019, according to the Council on Criminal Justice. The International Association of Chiefs of Police published a paper called “A Crisis for Law Enforcement” that shows 78% of law enforcement agencies have had “difficulty in recruiting qualified candidates” and that 65% reported having “too few candidates applying to be law enforcement officers.”

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Bill Clinton Warns Democrats Not to Let ‘Defund the Police and Socialism’ Hurt Them This Election

Just the News

Former President Bill Clinton warned the Democratic Party that it shouldn’t let “defund the police and socialism” damage their chances of winning the Nov. 8 election.

Clinton was asked how the U.S. should handle existing threats to its democracy.

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Kari Lake Still Waiting for Katie Hobbs to Denounce Organizations Which Oppose the Police

Neil Jones

Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and the Arizona Police Association (APA) have received radio silence from Democrat Katie Hobbs since sending her a letter six days ago demanding she denounce her allies who support defunding the police.

“Arizona voters are finally seeing who Katie Hobbs really is – a radical BLM activist who signs pledges denouncing law enforcement and fraternizes with dangerous ‘defund the police’ activists on the Left. Maybe that’s why she’s so afraid to share a debate stage with me, because she’ll be forced to defend her extreme anti-public safety positions,” Lake said in a press release.

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Kari Lake Says She Will Be the Governor to Back the Police

Neil Jones

Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake spoke at a press conference Thursday in support of Arizona police.

“I want these men and women behind me to know that on your darkest day, on your toughest day, when you’re in the middle of that storm, I will be standing right there by you as your governor,” Lake said. “I will not step away. I will not waiver. I will support you until you have due process. That’s what these men and women deserve.”

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Commentary: To Save Freedom, Defund Pro Sports

Arizona Sun Times Staff

In the last few years, the “Defund the Police” cry has reverberated through many of our cities. The police are not serving our communities, we’re told, and they’re wasting taxpayer money on ineffective services and driving racism. “It’s time to get rid of them,” many yell.

They’re barking up the wrong tree. If the public wants to defund something that’s wasting money and not serving the community, then they should look toward pro sports and defund them.

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Another ‘Defund Police’ Group Endorses Katie Hobbs

Peter D'Abrosca

Another group that advocates for defunding the police has endorsed Arizona’s Democrat gubernatorial candidate, in what is becoming a pattern. 

“As Arizonans grapple with an all out ban on abortion that [Kari Lake] has promised to defend, I’m proud to have [NARAL Arizona’s] endorsement. Arizonans deserve a governor who will fight to let them make their own decisions about their lives, families, & futures,” said Secretary of State and Democrat candidate for governor Katie Hobbs. 

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Arizona Planned Parenthood Demands Candidates Denounce Police Support in Order to Obtain Endorsement

Cooper Moran

Planned Parenthood Arizona’s political arm demands that candidates denounce the support of law enforcement groups in order to obtain the group’s endorsement.

According to a report from Axios, the group formally adopted a policy to require candidates to deny financial donations from law enforcement organizations and return any donations received.

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Report: Stacey Abrams’ Campaign Spent $450K on Security Despite Backing ‘Defund Police’ Movement

Admin

Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has doled out hundreds of thousands on private security despite her ties to the Defund the Police movement, according to Fox News.

Abrams’ campaign paid $450,000 to an Atlanta-based security firm called Executive Protection Agencies between December 2021 and April 2022, Fox News reported Tuesday. But Abrams also sits on the board of The Marguerite Casey Foundation — a nonprofit she joined in 2021 that has supported abolishing and defunding police.

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Numbers of Black Americans Murdered Increased in Wake of Defund the Police Movement: Report

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Support for calls across the nation to to defund police departments nationwide and pandemic-related factors has led to an increase in the number of murders of black Americans, according to an analysis by the Manhattan Institute.

The overall murder rate increased 30% from 2020 to 2021, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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Soros Family Continues to Support ‘Defund the Police’ Candidates

Admin
George Soros

Far-left billionaire George Soros, along with his daughter Andrea Soros Colombel, is continuing to donate to organizations that bankroll radical candidates who support defunding the police in the United States.

As reported by Fox News, the Soros family has still been donating to a joint fundraising committee that oversees multiple other PACs. The committee, called Lead The Way 2022, includes the Way to Lead PAC, the campaign committee of radical Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Mo.), and the campaigns of up to 12 other far-left political candidates running for the U.S. Congress.

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U.S. Civil Rights Commissioners to AG Merrick Garland: U.S. Attorneys Must ‘Increase Prosecutions in Cities Where Local Prosecutors’ Are Soft on Crime

Susan Berry, PhD
Attorney General Merrick Garland

In a letter obtained by The Star News Network, four commissioners of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights express their “urgent concerns” to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland about the radical increase in violent crime in America, and ask him to direct the Department of Justice to escalate prosecutions of violent criminals.

U.S. Civil Rights Commissioners Peter Kirsanow (R), Gail Heriot (I), J. Christian Adams (R), and Stephen Gilchrist (R), wrote to Garland Thursday, “not on behalf of the Commission as a whole,” of their concerns about the significant rise in crime “that has affected our nation over the past two years.”

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Arizona Congressman Tom O’Halleran Received Donation from PAC That Demands Candidates Support Defunding the Police

Cooper Moran

Congressman Tom O’Halleran (D-AZ-01) accepted thousands in campaign donations from a super PAC that encourages candidates to support measures to “reduce the annual budget for law enforcement and defense spending.”

The Courage to Change PAC, connected to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, donated the money to O’Halleran’s campaign in early 2021, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.

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After Defund the Police Changes Local Sex Offender Policies, Students Feel ‘Compromised’

Arizona Sun Times Staff

With cops in Austin, Texas, not supervising “hundreds of sex offender cases” due to Defund the Police budget cuts, Campus Reform spoke with students at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) about their safety.

“The situation in the city of Austin has been critical for some time ever since the city of Austin council decided to defund the police unanimously in the summer of 2020, and reduce their police budget by one-third,” sophomore Carter Moxley said.

Moxley also discussed UT Austin President Jay Hartzell’s decision last November to “increase [University of Texas Police Department] patrol in the west campus area and develop additional options to enhance safety for [the] students” after a violent incident near campus.

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Commentary: The ‘New Normal’ and the Assault on Reason

Arizona Sun Times Staff

Our political situation is so chaotic and strange right now that we can’t take anything for granted—including what is normal. So it’s often necessary to explain what may seem obvious to readers of American Greatness, but is regarded as strange or almost incomprehensible to other people. 

For example, it is obvious to me, and probably to you, that today’s “progressive” agenda is actually pushing our country back to a more primitive past. 

Consider some of the most urgent priorities of woke ideology:

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Wokeness Is a Multi-Billion Dollar Business in America, and It Has Some Dems Scared

Admin

An outpouring of grants to activist groups promoting race-based ideology is causing problems for some Democrats by highlighting the most unpopular beliefs of party members, according to an op-ed published in The New York Times.

Charitable support for “racial equity” projects skyrocketed after the death of George Floyd in June 2020. These projects received $3.3 billion from 2011 to 2019, then $12.7 billion and $11.6 billion in 2020 and 2021, respectively, according to the NYT op-ed.

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George Soros, Unions, Other Far-Left Entities Donated Heavily to Defeat Pro-Police Ballot Measure in Austin, Texas

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Police lights on top of car

A ballot measure aimed at increasing the number of police officers in the city of Austin, Texas was defeated in Tuesday’s election after hundreds of thousands of dollars was spent against it by George Soros, unions, and other organizations from outside of Texas, as reported by Fox News.

The question before voters, known as Prop A, would have required the city to hire two police officers for every 1,000 residents, and would subsequently increase officer training to accommodate the new hires. The measure was put on the ballot in response to a surge in violent crime in the wake of last year’s violent race riots, and a subsequent decline in the number of officers due to the “defund the police” movement as well as increasingly strict vaccine mandates.

The bulk of the money spent against Prop A came from outside the state of Texas. Chief among them was the far-left Equity PAC, which was given $500,000 by George Soros’s Open Society foundation, contributing to a total war chest of around $1.2 million. Other culprits include the equally far-left group known as the 1630 Fund, which spent $100,000 against Prop A, and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, which spent another $100,000. Another Soros-linked group, the Fairness Project, spent $200,000 to defeat Prop A.

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Senate Unanimously Votes Against Defunding the Police

Arizona Sun Times Staff

The Senate early Wednesday unanimously approved an amendment to its proposed budget that opposed defunding the police.

The amendment, offered by Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, came during the Senate’s overnight vote-a-rama, a marathon session during consideration of Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget where members can offer unlimited amendments. While the votes are non-binding, they can sometimes be politically tricky for senators as their colleagues force on-the-record positions on contentious issues.

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Rising Crime Forces Liberals to Reckon with Their Stance on the Police

Arizona Sun Times Staff

by Ailan Evans   As rates of violent crime continue to rise across the country and once-safe neighborhoods face increased dangers, many liberal communities are having to confront their complicated relationship with the police. Following the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, the defund the police movement attracted attention and support…

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Police Departments Say Budget Cuts Are the Reason They’ve Been Unable to Hire New Officers

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Two police officers walking in front of LED American flag

Multiple police departments told the Daily Caller News Foundation that recruiting officers is not an issue, but budget constraints have limited their ability to increase manpower.

Almost a year after George Floyd died during an arrest where former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes resulting in nationwide civil unrest and the defund the police movement, most police departments say they still have a sufficient number of candidates but lack the funding to recruit them.

“The Minneapolis Police Department, like every department, has seen a drop in application numbers over the last several years,” Minneapolis Police Department Spokesperson John Elder told the DCNF. “Whereas we have seen a reduction in applications, we still have ample qualified candidates who wish to be Minneapolis Police Officers and Cadets [and the department’s] recruitment efforts are ongoing.”

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Hamilton College Student Leaders Work to ‘Defund the Police,’ Claim ‘White Supremacists’ Are on Campus

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Hamilton College

Following the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial, students and faculty at Hamilton College received an email denoting some of them as white supremacists and calling for the admissions office to better block such students from enrolling in the future.

It was part of a larger push to grow a “defund the police” effort at the private, New York college.

The email came from leadership at the school’s Student Assembly and was signed by President Saphire Ruiz as well as Fall Vice President Eric Stenzel and Spring Vice President Christian Hernandez Barragan.

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