Following the death of George Floyd, it seemed liberal cities all over the nation began screaming “defund the police.” They wanted law enforcement budgets to be gutted and that money used for all kinds of other things.
Now, I’m a big fan of trying to prevent crime versus responding to it, but those efforts take time. Years upon years, in fact, before you see a dent. Defunding law enforcement at the start was always going to be a recipe for disaster.
And, well, look around.
San Francisco, for example, was knee-deep in the “defund the police” mess and their crime is through the roof. In fact, one of the lawmakers known for screaming those three words is now upset that there aren’t more police.
Another Democrat has been confronted with the disastrous consequences of the policies she once championed.
San Francisco City Supervisor Hillary Ronen announced last week that she is “begging” for more police officers for her crime-ravaged city, particularly in the district she oversees. This desperate plea comes just a few years after the Democrat called for the police to be defunded and suggested that half-measures amounted to a “slap in the face.”
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During her time in office, she has lent her support to the George Soros-backed leftist district attorney, Chesa Boudin. Boudin, whose parents were members of a leftist terrorist organization, has been accused of overseeing a crime surge in the city.
Whereas in 2016 Ronen campaigned on making “police part of our community,” in 2020, she jumped on the BLM bandwagon and pushed for reductions to police budgets.
So just how have things gone?
Well, now, Ronen is pretty much pretending she never said any of those things and that it’s just on the police.
During a Budget and Appropriations Committee meeting on March 15, Ronen implored the SFPD to prioritize police presence in her district rather than spending overtime on an anti-retail theft program, reported Fox News Digital.
“I’ve been begging this department to give the Mission what it deserves in terms of police presence all year long,” said Ronen. “And I have been told time and time and time and time again there are no officers that we can send to Mission.”
Despite having previously suggested anything less than a major cut to police budgets was a “slap in the face,” Ronen claimed Wednesday she felt the SFPD had let her down.
“It hurts. And I feel betrayed by the department. I feel betrayed by the mayor. I feel betrayed by the priorities of the city,” said Ronen.
TheBlaze reports, though, that San Francisco went from a department of 1,840 officers in 2019 to just 1,514 officers. That’s an 18 percent drop in officers.
And we need to remember that not all of those officers are on the streets. Many fill desk duties or other roles within the department that are needed but aren’t exactly boots-on-the-ground type of roles.
Ronen says she feels betrayed by the department, but I’m pretty sure they can say the same about her. It’s clear that she was all about law enforcement until the political winds started blowing in the other direction, which prompted her to throw them under the bus.
While it’s unlikely that the department is simply allowing crime to soar in her district, I’m sure they’re not exactly displeased to see Ronen feel the heat after her antics targeted them.
The truth is that “defund the police” made a nice slogan, but it wasn’t rooted in anything but anger and ignorance. You cannot just cut police budgets and somehow rationally believe that crime rates aren’t going to soar.
Hell, they soared in places that didn’t cut police budgets just because the bad guys thought police budgets were going to be cut due to “defund the police” rhetoric. You better believe it would increase in places where that actually happened.
Ronen has made her bed. Now she gets to lay in it.
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