Less than two weeks after George Floyd died in the custody of Minneapolis police in May 2020, prominent city council members gathered in front of activists and pledged to start dismantling the Minneapolis Police Department.
“Decades of police reform efforts have proved that the Minneapolis Police Department cannot be reformed and will never be accountable for its actions,” the council members stated, according to the Star Tribune. “We are here today to begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department and creating a new, transformative model for cultivating safety in Minneapolis.”
In addition to cutting police budgets and doing away with many officers, numerous police departments also were decimated after frustrated, abused, and unsupported cops simply turned in their badges.
The “defund the police” movement was born.
And in the same way rioting commenced in Minneapolis in the wake of Floyd’s death and spread across America, so did the notion of defunding and dismantling police departments. Other cities such as Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, and Chicago got into the act.
It was a bad idea.
So much so that voters in Minneapolis a year and half later rejected the idea of removing the city’s police department and replacing it with “a Department of Public Safety that employs a comprehensive public health approach …”
In addition to cutting police budgets and doing away with many officers, numerous police departments also were decimated after frustrated, abused, and unsupported cops simply turned in their badges.
Law enforcement officials in 2022 called it a “crisis.” A perfect storm of spiking crime and violence in the streets — along with police getting defunded or quitting — led not only to staffing shortages, but also new cops weren’t signing up.
“What they’re doing now is vilifying the job, and they’re connecting with our state’s attorney and our chief judge, letting all these prisoners out and all these offenders out immediately,” former Chicago police officer Anthony Napolitano said. “And it makes cops throw their hands up in the air and say, ‘I’m not going to do this job any more.'”
Here are 10 times when “defund the police” backfired spectacularly.
Boy, 13, forced to watch his dad die after delayed response by Seattle cops; family sues, blames ‘defund the police’ movement
People carry signs during a “Defund the Police” march from King County Youth Jail to City Hall in Seattle, Washington, Aug. 5, 2020.
Photo by JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images
The family of a man who died after a delayed police response to his medical emergency filed a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Seattle in December 2022. A year prior, 46-year-old William Yurek’s son, 13, called 911 while his father was having chest pains and difficulty breathing. Yurek soon after died of cardiac arrest in front of his son. The lawsuit stated that the Seattle police department “was severely understaffed at the time of this incident due to fallout from the abandonment of the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, a.k.a. ‘CHOP,’ a perceived lack of support from the city, vaccine mandates, and other factors, including city mismanagement.” Seattle last year settled the lawsuit for $1.86 million.
Progressive Vermont city regrets its ‘defund the police’ effort; Democrat mayor says ‘a lot of damage’ has been done
Burlington’s “defund the police” movement failed so dramatically that even the progressive council member who pushed it admitted the city messed up, NBC News reported in December 2021. About 18 months prior, a resolution passed that slashed the police force by 30%, removed resource officers from schools, and shifted police funding to social justice initiatives. Instead cops felt attacked, and they left the department in droves. The city, with its 44,000 residents, went from a police force of 95 to 64 — resulting in only about five officers available to patrol at night. The city’s Democratic mayor, Miro Weinberger, didn’t support cutting the force and wasn’t happy with the defunding efforts: “There’s a lot of damage that has been done in the last 16 months.”
Soon after its ‘defund the police’ efforts, Minneapolis tells crime victims to cooperate with criminals, turn over their property
Minneapolis rioting in response to death of George Floyd, May 29, 2020.
Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times
The city circulated a letter in late July 2020 telling residents in the third police precinct that due to the overwhelming violent crime wave, they should “be prepared to give up your cell phone and purse/wallet” — and if confronted by a violent robber “do as they say.” The letter added that “robberies and Carjacking’s have increased in our precinct. Cell phones, purses, and vehicles are being targeted. Some victims have been maced, dragged, assaulted, and threatened with a gun.” In addition, “100 robberies and 20 carjackings have been reported to the 3rd Precinct Police in July alone.” Just days after George Floyd’s death, violent protesters breached the police department’s 3rd precinct building and set a fire inside the station. In November, carjackings were up 537% compared to the previous year.
Minneapolis city council’s ‘defund the police’ initiative inspires residents of left-wing neighborhood to stop calling cops. Boy, are they sorry.
After the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, the city council dreamed of a “transformative new model” of public safety in which community social workers — not armed police officers — enforced the law. So a neighborhood the New York Times described as “a haven to leftist activists and bohemian artists” vowed — as a way to protest racial injustice — not to call police. But within a month, their tree-lined neighborhood became a haven for crime and hundreds of homeless people. Resident Shari Albers organized “her mostly white neighbors” to “help tackle long-standing issues with crime,” but instead she was kept awake at night by the “Powderhorn Park Sanctuary.” The Times reported that the homeless community “has drawn heavy car traffic into the neighborhood, some from drug dealers.” Albers admitted to the paper, “I am afraid. I know my neighbors are around, but I’m not feeling grounded in my city at all. Anything could happen.”
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