The results are in. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s refusal to buckle to the radical #DEFUNDTHEPOLICE movement is paying dividends for Floridians. Marc Sarnoff explains in National Review:
Crime is skyrocketing across the country — but not in Florida. After the Covid-19 pandemic started and the George Floyd killing led to riots in one city after another, many local officials embraced “Defund the Police” and other soft-on-crime approaches, with disastrous results. But in Florida, Democrats and Republicans alike realized that personal safety is an overriding human need. And they delivered. That is another reason that residents of other states are voting with their feet and moving to the Free State of Florida.
The “Defund the Police” movement began in 2020 with self-designated “autonomous zones,” where police were barred from parts of Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis. Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan welcomed the officially sponsored anarchy as a “summer of love.” Shootings and murders proliferated along with allegations of sexual assault, and a quickly brewing mental-health crisis was being reported, but there was no one to investigate. The experiment was an utter failure, as each zone logged record crime rates. The inmates were running the asylum.
The failed result did not deter calls to “defund the police,” and 21 cities voted to do so. The results have been disastrous. In 2020, murders skyrocketed by 63 percent in Seattle, 43 percent in New York City, and 150 percent in Chula Vista, outside San Diego. The major city with the biggest crime increase during the pandemic appears to be Austin, Texas, where the murder rate rose 48 percent in 2020, and another 86 percent in 2021. In 22 major U.S. cities, murders increased 44 percent from 2019 to 2021.
Miami, too, was tested by protests in 2020. But the police in Miami did not allow the state’s monopoly of force to be contested by criminals. Violent protesters were arrested and prosecuted for aggravated assault. Video of police officers forcefully responding to protesters attacking their vehicle went viral and helped make clear that law and order would be preserved.
Protests across Florida quickly petered out, and the results are now in: Bucking the national trend, Miami saw violent crime drop significantly in 2021 after rising in 2020, with the murder rate falling more than 15 percent.
Despite the spectacular failure of their policies, officials in blue states have doubled down. In Los Angeles, where rail theft has increased 356 percent, Union Pacific says its patrolling officers have arrested more than 100 people in the past few months, but none have been prosecuted by LA District Attorney George Gascon, who issued special directives that, unless it is committed with violence, a felony be reduced to a misdemeanor with no jail time. Defunding the police doesn’t just limit the number of available police. It also creates a disincentive for the police to perform their duties at all.
New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg believes, along with his LA counterpart, that nonviolent crimes do not need prosecution. Bragg was recently called out by the widow of Jason Rivera, a young policeman who, along with his partner Wilbert Mora, was gunned down responding to a domestic-violence call in January. “We are not safe anymore, not even members of the service,” Dominique Luzuriaga, Rivera’s widow, said in her eulogy. “I know we are tired of these laws [a reference to Bragg’s memo to prosecutors that nonviolent felonies will not be charged], especially from the new DA. I hope he [Rivera] is watching. You speak through me right now!” So far in 2022, 19 police officers have been shot dead in the line of duty, and 71 have been shot and wounded.
Action Line: Do your local politicians care about you? Or would they rather defund the police and leave you to fend for yourself? The easy way to tell is by looking at how they treat you. Do they maximize your freedom while minimizing their impact on your livelihood? If not, if instead, they treat you more like a piggy bank and someone they have power over, it’s time to look for a better America. Start your search with my Super States. If you need regular guidance on the best places in America, click here to sign up for my free Survive & Thrive letter. I’ll help you find a better America, today.
