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Donmiggy143 t1_jcysk58 wrote

Reply to comment by mreed911 in San Francisco official who pushed to defund police pleads for more officers in her district by Top-Organization-124

No. Which meant fewer police tanks, and riot gear, and payouts for terrible police behavior. Slightly reduced budgets for less police bloat, and more experts to handle delicate situations. That doesn't mean less police. But the unions sure wanted to make you think that's what it would do.

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mreed911 t1_jcyt5va wrote

It’s meant fewer police in every major city that reduced budgets.

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Jarjarthejedi t1_jcz4w6w wrote

And where was that? I haven't seen a single major city that actually reduced police budgets. Tons of people talking about how "oh, they reduced police budgets and then needed police, ha ha!" but in literally every one of those cases (including this one, as San Fran increased its police budgets since 2019, https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-department-funding/12321818/ ) the police budget went up and police usefulness continued to go down, and the "its because of defund!" was nothing but propaganda.

So which actual cities did this happen in?

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mreed911 t1_jcza74n wrote

https://www.austinmonitor.com/data-graphic/austin-police-department-budget-2012-2022

>During the 2020-21 budget process, City Council cut $31.5 million from APD’s budget, citing the protests and “community outcry against the disproportionate impact of police violence on Black Americans, Latinx Americans and other non-white ethnic communities,” according to the approved budget.
The following year, however, Council members approved a record-high APD budget – more than $443 million.

What this doesn't say, though, is that the operational budget was still cut and the increase in overall Police Budget was because several other operations that were moved out of APD were then merged back into APD and/or expanded the next year... like the combined city dispatch center, additional calltaker support, etc.

Austin, today, has fewer sworn officers on the streets but also a higher response times to priority calls, than previously, indicating it's not keeping up with demand despite taking street officers off of nonviolent property crime calls. A significant chunk of that budget increase was in non-sworn positions and 311 calltakers to deal with those issues, where APD issues a case number over the phone for non-violent property crimes (and never follows up).

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Jarjarthejedi t1_jczsd0m wrote

...So budgets went up, and usefulness continued to go down, and the people crying "it's because of the defund people!" continue to be liars. Exactly as I said. Neat? Thanks for the additional source I guess.

Also, fun fact about Austin. While they did officially cut police budgets in 2021, they put that extra money in a fund ("Decouple and Reimagine) designed to be used to move stuff to other areas but used for police business in 2021.

https://theaustinbulldog.org/did-austin-defund-the-police-here-are-the-numbers/

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mreed911 t1_jczuc0d wrote

Taking officers off the streets (APD has fewer sworn officers today in actual numbers an in terms of officers per 1000 people) has resulted in increase operational burden, meaning longer waits for critical calls and deferment of non-critical calls to other departments (which I support).

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