Largest US cities set to invest more in policing after calls for defunding in 2020

In addition to a spike in crime, one of the problems police forces are encountering is the cost of reform and retraining

New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are among the major US cities set to approve bigger police budgets despite the movement to defund departments.

While budgets were cut in the wake of the massive social justice uprising after the police killing of George Floyd, the amount of money allocated to law enforcement has crept back up, Newsweek reports.

While many civic leaders acted on calls for reform, they were then surprised at the number of people they represented who were not on board with their plans. Even in Minneapolis where Mr Floyd was killed, the recent proposal to replace the police department ended up being voted down.

One reason is thought to be the spike in violent crime in many cities across the US in late 2020 and early 2021 as police numbers declined, making it difficult to move ahead with reform policies as public support waned.

Wesley Skogan, a member of both Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research and the advisory panel for the Chicago Police Department’s Department’s community policing program, told Newsweek that it was a “really tough political environment to talk about cutting back the number of police”.

“Part of it is the crime wave and the fact that there were lots of people out there who were looking for protection,” he added. “There were a lot of promises for the future … but not a lot of specifics about next week.”

In addition to a spike in crime, one of the problems police forces are encountering is the cost of reform and retraining. Mr Skogan notes that when officers are in training they are not out on the streets, and also that equipment costs to facilitate better monitoring of those in the field, such as body cameras, are high.

New York City cut its police budget from $6bn to $5.2bn for 2021, only to implement a $200m mid-year increase after crime spiked 22 per cent year-on-year in May.

In Los Angeles, the police budget was cut $150m in 2020 but was increased by three per cent in the 2021-22 fiscal year, with a further increase of 12 per cent requested by the police commission in November for 2022-23.

Similarly, Chicago cut $59m from the 2021 police budget of the nation’s second largest force (after the NYPD) only for the 2022 budget to grow from $1.7bn to $1.9bn.

These budget figures from large metropolitan areas and polling numbers appear to indicate how challenging the process of reforming the police might be.

As crime increased in the second half of 2020 and early 2021, Pew Research polling found 47 per cent of respondents thought spending on police in their area should be increased versus 31 per cent in June 2020.

Kevin Robinson, a retired assistant police chief in Phoenix, and a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, notes that as a society we have come to rely on law enforcement for everything and that he understands both sides of the argument regarding defunding the police.

He told Newsweek: “What those who are calling for defunding the police should be saying is we need to reallocate portions of the police budgets to deal with social service issues that we don’t want law enforcement to deal with. And law enforcement doesn’t want to deal with those things.”

Police numbers are down through an increase in retirements and voluntary resignations — contractual obligations make lay-offs difficult, even if such a move had popular support — but this is making the situation more complicated on top of the pandemic, which has also impacted staffing.

Mr Robinson explains: “Law enforcement managers are saying, ‘You know what, I am having to do a lot more with a lot less people, and I’m going to need the budget in order to accomplish the things that you want me to accomplish and to keep citizens safe in our community’.”