The city of Austin, Texas is facing a public safety crisis after voting to defund the police in the wake of the 2020 Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots.
In 2020, the Austin city council voted unanimously to cut $150 million from the police department budget, while at the same time, the city’s population has grown by leaps and bounds.
The resulting fallout has been disastrous for residents of the city. Police officers have resigned quicker than they can be replaced, which has led to a staffing crisis and entire swaths of the city now unable to be patrolled. Additionally, 911 calls have often been left unanswered, leaving citizens to fend for themselves in life-or-death situations.
Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock has said the reckless actions of the city council have put his community on the “brink of disaster.”
The defunding of the Austin Police Department has been an unmitigated disaster, with horrific consequences to the community and APD officers. Everyone responsible, and who advocated for this, should be ashamed!
Austin 'at the brink of disaster' https://t.co/So7MpTACZz
— Joe Gamaldi (@JoeGamaldi) March 3, 2024
Currently, the city’s police department is short by more than 500 officers, as a city that size should have around 2,000, but right now only has less than 1,500. Retirement, resignation, and lack of morale and funding are direct contributors to the decline.
Austin, the capital of Texas, has experienced amazing growth in recent decades. However, with that growth has come the transplanted “values” of people from other parts of the nation. The result is that Austin has become ground zero for the clash between “woke” ideology and traditional American patriotism. It ranks with Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco in reputation for notorious left-wing antics and activism.
The riots of 2020 were part of a wave of national unrest that followed the death of criminal fentanyl addict George Floyd in Minneapolis. While the circumstances of his death were undoubtedly controversial, it is clear that communist front organizations like Antifa and Black Lives Matter were looking for the right opportunity to create unrest on a massive scale during a presidential election year. The resulting violence and destruction were on a historic level as businesses were burned and looted in cities across the nation and leftist civic leaders bowed to their demands to defund police departments everywhere.
Of course, it is clear that defunding emergency responders will only result in longer police response times and a weakened ability to prevent and pursue lawbreakers. Conveniently, this would seem to work out quite well for communist organizations that want more freedom to create politically motivated social disturbances as part of their ongoing attempt to revolutionize the United States.
However, citing narratives of police abuse and racism, many have been duped into supporting a cause that, ultimately, has done much more harm to their communities than they ever imagined.
