In Los Angeles, the county mayor said local residents are at risk because “Withholding funding has consequences,” despite his agency budget being over $250 million.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva is not alone in suggesting to voters that crime has risen because Democrats have halted funding for police agencies after nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020.
Politicians, analysts, and police chiefs across the country are repeating the idea as they address concerns about crime heading toward Election Day.
The truth is, in many societies, the withdrawal of funding has never occurred.
ABC-owned television stations examined the budgets of more than 100 cities and counties and found that 83% spent at least 2% on police in 2022 compared to 2019.
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Of the 109 budgets analyzed, only eight agencies cut police funds by more than 2% and 91 agencies increased law enforcement funding by at least 2%.
In 49 cities or counties, police funding has increased by more than 10%.
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false novel
Despite what the public record shows, analysis of broadcast transcripts reveals that candidates, law enforcement leaders and TV presenters have discussed the impact of “withdrawing police funding” more than 10,000 times over the past two years and that signals have not subsided this campaign season.
In cross-country communities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, [and] Many other places, it’s a wonderful and amazing crime outbreak,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at Video posted by the Republican Governing Council on Twitter in August.
“You usually see where these crimes happen, there’s been a de-emphasis on the role of law enforcement,” Abbott added. “It can cut off funding for law enforcement. It can be an understatement of law enforcement.”
Democrats were drawn to the defunding narrative, too. in 2022 State of the UnionPresident Joe Biden was met with bipartisan applause after he said, “The answer is not to stop funding the police. It’s funding the police. Fund it!”
Dr. Rashon Ray, a sociologist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told KABC in Los Angeles that the false narrative has held up because of this repetition by government officials.
“Overwhelmingly, cities, counties, [and] Ray said police departments across the country are not being defunded in any way. In fact, many of them increased their budgets. Part of the reason the police narrative of stopping funding has survived is that police officers say it and elected officials say it.”
How have the budgets of law enforcement agencies changed?
ABC OTV’s analysis of police budget data shows that police spending has risen in some of the same cities that politicians and conservative pundits often cite as places where defunding Democratic leaders fueled waves of violent crime.
In Houston, where the murder rate nearly doubled in 2020 and 2021 before starting to decline this year, local government officials have not cut police spending.
They raised it – about 9% (nearly $80 million) from 2019 to 2022.
Similarly, Chicago police spending is up 15% since 2019. That’s nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in new police spending since 2019.
Related: New data analysis reveals police funding nationally and in Illinois communities
The Los Angeles Police Department’s budget rose 9.4%, San Francisco’s 4%, and Philadelphia’s 3%.
A few cities have attempted to reallocate police spending after concerns from advocacy groups in the wake of the protests.
Related: The I-Team found that Auckland PD’s budget has increased nearly 18% since 2019
in Austin, Texas, Commanders cut the police budget by about 30% in 2021proposing that that money be spent instead on programs such as domestic violence prevention, mental health workers, and police surveillance.
who – which It lasted one year. The Texas legislature voted to prevent cities from cutting police budgets, so Austin boosted police spending by 50% in 2022.
In Los Angeles County, where Villanueva is locked in a tight reelection battle, the sheriff has been vocal for months about The effect of withdrawing funding His agency, claiming that his budget is being “dismantled”.
The truth is that his agency’s budget rose by about 8% – more than $259 million – from 2019 to 2022.
“While the perception may be that the withdrawal of funding is happening, in reality, the sheriff’s budget has increased,” county superintendent Catherine Barger said.
When KABC challenged his claims to cancel the funding, Villanueva acknowledged that his budget was higher, but not enough to cover the increased costs. And if the day-to-day costs are growing faster than the money the county is providing him with, it’s a “direct withdrawal of funding, of course,” he said.
The county superintendent said salary and cost increases are not unique to the mayor’s department and they affect many county departments. “He’s playing like he’s a target,” Barger said.
Despite all the fuss, Los Angeles County’s Next Budget Sheriff’s Department spending in 2023 increases by another quarter of a billion dollars.
Police spending does not lead to crime figures
Even if the cuts are real, the assumption that reduced police spending leads to increased crime (or vice versa) is at odds with decades of evidence, according to public data and criminal justice experts.
ABC OTV Analysis of Funding for state and local police And the Violent crime data in the United States Overall between 1985 and 2020, you found no relationship between year-to-year police spending and crime rates. (that Analysis by The Washington Post I found similar results from 1960 to 2018.)
further analysis Los Angeles County crime data Show violent crime numbers do not go up or down with anything to do with money spent on law enforcement or the number of officers on patrol.
Kimberly Dodson, a retired law enforcement officer who is now a criminologist at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, said this is mostly due to the police reaction to the crime.
“Crime happens. Someone calls the police, and they come and take a report. Then they try to solve the crime after the fact, right? So, saying that police deterring crime isn’t actually accurate. Because they are more of a reaction agency,” Dodson told KTRK in Houston.
One reason police agencies feel stretched, she said, is that societies ask them to “be everything to everyone. And that doesn’t seem fair.”
Police are called upon to deal with problems caused by chronic mental health problems, family conflicts or deep-seated poverty that has persisted over decades. It’s something officers talk about often, Dodson said.
“We had many conversations and we were always talking about police officers, going out for 10 minutes, fixing something that was wrong and putting Band-Aid on it, something that has been wrong for 10 years. And it’s just an ‘impossible’ mission,” she added.
To change that, the way emergency calls are handled must change as well, something that Ray, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, is working on.
The idea is to narrow the police mission to crime and safety, and reallocate government resources so that others can deal with problems that do not require police intervention.
“Are there better ways to think about calls to service, whether it’s mental health responses, whether it’s a different kind[s] Who did the traffic officers deal with in those particular cases? Think Ray.
Ray said the idea could give police more time to focus on solving crimes and protecting people.
“It could actually set them free,” Ray said.
However, the political debate around the “for or against” idea that elected officials do not support the police because they cut their budgets is narrowing.
Migration of police officers
When presenting the data that budgets have not been cut, some police proponents tend to argue that simply demanding that police budgets be defunded hurts officers’ morale. This became the position of police advocates in New York City.
After Floyd’s murder in 2020, protesters clashed with the New York Police, and some even set cars on fire. Officers fought and arrested hundreds each night. The NYPD says more than 300 officers have been injured, as have many protesters.
Politicians waved accountability and some suggested a $1 billion cut from the New York Police Department’s budget.
The billion-dollar cut never happened. The New York Police Department’s budget declined by just 2.8%, from $5.6 billion in 2019 to $5.4 billion in 2022.
Patrick Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said the defund movement hurt the officer’s morale.
“More than any budget cut, the biggest damage to the ‘Defund the Police’ movement has been its anti-police and anti-public safety message,” Lynch told WABC in New York. “It has created an impossible environment on the streets, where even the simplest interactions turn into confrontation.”
The data indicates that NYPD Exodus in 2020. Retirements are up 72% from the previous year and employees continue to struggle.
The NYPD lost more people through August 2022 than the same time period in any previous year.
“With more cops resigning, the workload becomes more difficult for those who remain. Public safety is eventually damaged,” Lynch said. “When politicians make political decisions based on the slogans on the protest banners, our whole city pays the price.”
Related: Is money actually withdrawn from police agencies? The data indicates that this is not the case
John Kelly, Mark Nichols, Maya Rosenfeld, Lindsey Feingold, Nick Natario, Maggie Green, Lisa Bartley, Carlos Granda, Jared Kofsky, and Tonya Simpson contributed to this report.
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