Are Dems Changing Their Message on Police Defunding?

A year after Democratic mayors pledged to cut police budgets and funnel money toward social services, several leaders are now changing their tune, boosting police budgets and hiring more officers amid a crime surge.

Reuters reports that the uptick in crime has fractured Democratic support for the “defund movement” — while progressive Democrats still hope to overhaul U.S. policing, centrist Democrats are seeking to bolster traditional law enforcement techniques.

The division has been particularly prominent in New York — as well as Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Seattle — where legislators pivoted from slashing almost $1 billion in police funds last year to adding $200 million this year. In D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser asked city council last month for $11 million to hire 170 new police officers after a series of shootings.

Politicians have always politicized crime. But narratives about crime and political parties will likely play a central role in next year’s midterm elections.

Republican party officials are already casting Democrats as “enemies of law enforcement,” Reuters reports, despite the fact that many mainstream Democrats never entirely supported defunding the police.

Voters, too, reject cutting police budgets by large margins. A USA Today/Ipsos survey found that about two-thirds of respondents believe crime is worsening and that 7 in 10 support bigger police budgets. Only 22 percent said they support defunding police.

Experts say the turn from police reform to police expansion has much to do with the pandemic. A lack of social supports amid widespread unemployment, as well as the straining of municipal budgets and overwhelmed police patrols, all contributed to rising crime, according to Wesley Skogan, a policing expert at Northwestern University.

Divides in the Democratic Party will likely lead to tight races nationwide. In Minneapolis, where Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, Mayor Jacob Frey opposes cutting police budgets amid rising crime, saying doing so is “not a realistic solution given the circumstances our city is facing.”

Frey faces strong opposition in Sheila Nezhad, a community organizer who backs a radical overhaul of policing.

But the country’s most prominent Democrat — President Joe Biden — favors boosting budgets for police. In July, he invited several Democratic leaders, including Bowser, to the White House for a summit on gun violence, urging cities to use federal stimulus money to hire new officers.

This summary was prepared by TCR Justice Reporting intern Eva Herscowitz.