Democrats Want Police Protection for Themselves by Marc A. Thiessen

Political Crossfire Democrats Want Police Protection for Themselves, Not For the Rest of Us

By Marc A. Thiessen

Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., is an outspoken advocate for defunding the police, who has called America “racist” and declared that modern-day policing is “another system of bondage” through which “slavery quite literally lives on today.” So, it was ironic to say the least when news broke that Bush paid nearly $70,000 over the past three months for private police protection.

In truth, Bush isn’t paying for personal security; her campaign donors are paying for her personal security. Her police protection accounted for more than a third of her campaign expenditures during the second quarter. So, the very individuals and organizations that were so excited by her calls to defund the police that they contributed to her campaign are actually funding police to protect Cori Bush.

The problem is her constituents don’t have rich supporters willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to protect them. They have the police. And the city of St. Louis, which Bush represents in Congress, recently cut $4 million from its police budget and eliminated 98 officer positions. Where is the money going? About $1.5 million will go for affordable housing, another million will go to assist the homeless population, and another million will be diverted to crime-victim support services – including funeral expenses for crime victims.

Maybe if St. Louis had a hundred more cops on the streets, there would be fewer funerals. Last year, the city had 262 homicides, the most per 100,000 people since 1970. Yet despite the explosion of murders in her city, Bush praised the decision to take almost 100 police officers off the streets of St. Louis as “historic.”

We are seeing a similar spike in violent crime across the country. The New York Times reports that last year was the worst year for killings since the mid-1990s. Homicide rates in large cities were up 30% on average last year and are already up 24% for the beginning of this year. Sixty-three of the 66 largest police jurisdictions saw increases in homicide, rape, robbery or aggravated assault in 2020, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

What do many of these cities have in common? They are run by Democrats who have defunded the police. Minneapolis cut $8 million from the police budget. Oakland, Calif., cut $14.6 million. Portland, Ore., cut $15 million. Philadelphia cut police funding by $33 million. New York cut a whopping $1 billion.

Not only has police funding been cut, police morale has plunged over the past year, leading to soaring retirements and resignations. NPR reports that a June survey of nearly 200 departments found a 45% increase in police retirements and a nearly 20% increase in resignations. Meanwhile, new police hiring has dropped 5% nationwide.

Many cities are using these vacancies as a back-channel way to cut police funding. Seattle (which has had 232 shootings so far this year, up from 164 at the same time last year) reduced its police budget by $7.7 million in part by pocketing $5 million salary savings from the roughly 270 police officers who have left the force in recent months. Chicago (which saw 70 shootings just last weekend, including 12 fatalities) quietly eliminated 400 police officers positions in 2020, while Los Angeles cut its force by 200 officer positions. In other words, many cities don’t need to defund the police; they can just sit back and wait for the police to defund themselves through resignations and retirements.

The problem will only get worse if Democrats in Washington get their way. Congress missed the May deadline President Joe Biden set to approve police reform legislation, despite broad bipartisan agreement on most elements of a bill. The sticking point? Democrats want to strip away qualified immunity from police officers so they can be sued in civil court. Officers have no immunity from criminal prosecution, and victims can sue the city in the civil court for damages stemming from misconduct. But for Democrats that is not good enough – they want to see officers sued personally. This will lead to a flood of frivolous lawsuits, as well as even more retirements and resignations, as officers decide that protecting the community is no longer worth the risk to their families and futures.

This is not what Americans want. A USA Today/Ipsos poll finds only 18% support defunding the police, including only 28% of Black Americans and 34% of Democrats. In crime-ravaged Detroit, residents say they want more police on the street, not less, by an overwhelming 9-to-1 margin.

Because unlike Cori Bush, these Americans can’t afford private security.