“Depolicing”

Ithaca, NY resident Richard Rivera sits on a committee called “Re-Imagining Public Safety,” which is responsible for suggesting reforms to the Ithaca Police Department. Mandated by New York State governor Andrew Cuomo, all 500 police agencies throughout N.Y. were tasked with holding public meetings in order to gather input about how best to operate. The participants in the Ithaca initiative chose to basically disband the police department and replace it with a hybrid group of armed and unarmed de-escalation people who would replace the traditional way of policing.

One thing we’ve learned over the past year as surging violence has been tearing up many American cities is that when you defund your police or reduce their numbers, incidents of carjacking rise proportionally. It’s an easy crime to pull off, particularly for gang members, and the profits are allegedly handsome. Also, they frequently enlist underage members to commit the crimes, knowing that they will be back out on the street in short order. That was the case in Minneapolis over the winter. 

Democratic Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler submitted a request to the Portland City Council on Thursday for a one-time $2 million expenditure for police, months after the council voted to cut nearly $16 million from the police bureau’s budget.

Wheeler, who previously advocated for the Portland Police Bureau’s budget to be cut, cited a dangerous surge in gun violence throughout the city as the primary reason for requesting the funds, according to the Oregonian.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed released a plan Thursday to redistribute $120 million from the city’s law enforcement budget to projects aimed at helping the city’s black minority.

When a call came to respond to a “shots fired” in downtown Nashville on Christmas morning, it wasn’t antifa or Black Lives Matter who responded, it was six Nashville cops, some reportedly new to the job, who found themselves “standing between good and evil” in a potential mass casualty situation.