Photo: Flickr, Jason Hargrove, (CC BY 2.0)

 

 

Shock Survey Finds That Funding Is Being Reduced For “Nearly Half” Of All Major City Police Departments In America

 

 

In recent weeks there has been a tremendous amount of debate about whether police departments around the country should be “defunded” or not, but what most Americans don’t realize is that it is already happening on a massive scale.  At a time when crime rates are absolutely soaring and civil unrest is raging in major cities across the nation, police budgets are being deeply cut and in some cities there is talk of eliminating police departments altogether.  I knew that a few cities had already made moves in this direction, but I had no idea that it was happening on such a widespread basis.  According to a report prepared by the Police Executive Research Forum, nearly half of the law enforcement agencies that they surveyed “are reporting that funding has already been slashed or is expected to be reduced”

 

Nearly half of 258 agencies surveyed this month are reporting that funding has already been slashed or is expected to be reduced, according to a report slated for release this week by the Police Executive Research Forum, a non-partisan research organization.

 

Much of the funding is being pulled from equipment, hiring and training accounts, even as a number of cities also are tracking abrupt spikes in violent crime, the report concluded.

And in most cases we are not talking about small cuts.  Police funding in Los Angeles has been reduced by 15o million dollars, and police funding in New York has been slashed by a total of one billion dollars.

 

Those are staggering numbers.

 

In Seattle, there had been a proposal to cut police funding by 50 percent, but apparently that wasn’t good enough for some people and so now a measure has been introduced that would completely “abolish the entire Seattle Police Department”

 

BREAKING: Seattle City Council moves to abolish the entire Seattle Police Department and replace it with a “civilian led Department of Community Safety & Violence Prevention.”

 

They want to replace the police force with nonprofit programs and “community-led activities.”

 

If you live in the Seattle area and you are concerned that in the future you may not have anyone to call if someone breaks into your home, you can rest assured that someone will still be on the other end of the line when you call 911.

 

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