Under BLM leadership the city of St. Louis, Missouri has voted to defund their police department, slashing almost 100 positions in the police department and cutting millions from their budget. The city will instead be spending this money on social programs and “civil rights litigators.” Democrats are calling it a “historic” decision and celebrating a major victory in their efforts to defund police departments in cities nationwide.
Fighting murderers with social programs
According to the statistics, St. Louis actually needs more policing at the moment. The city has been named one of the most violent cities per capita, not only in the United States but globally.
The police defunding campaign in St. Louis has pointed to the fact that police in the city kill people annually at a rate much higher than the average for American cities.
Given the local rates of violent crime, however, this should be no great surprise. The city has, in the past, required a very large and well funded police department to combat these crime rates.
Some local residents expressed dismay at the idea that this may no longer be the case, explaining that they already feel unsafe in the dangerous city and would, if anything, rather have a stronger police presence in their area.
BLM supporting politicians seem to be ignoring these fears and advancing the police defunding program anyway. In a 2-1 committee vote the budget proposal was approved and now looks set to be confirmed soon.
Supposedly the budget reallocation is intended to address the “root causes” of crime in the city by offering more support for affordable housing programs.
American city one of the most violent in the world
Fighting a frighteningly high murder rate with more social programs may sound like insanity, but for the political leadership of BLM this is the heart of the policy proposals being made by the movement.
While they may or may not believe that spending more on affordable housing will actually decrease the crime rate when police are pulled back, the budget reallocations certainly support their primary goal of being soft on criminals.
The budget is a symbolic victory for BLM supporters nationwide then, and the fact that it will be a catastrophe for locals themselves is worth ignoring for the moral win of actually following through on the slogans and defunding a police department.
According to a study performed by a Mexican group St. Louis is already, in fact, the seventh most violent city in the world. The six cities which rank higher are all in Mexico.
Baltimore and New Orleans also made the list, cities which are just as enthusiastic as St. Louis about defunding the police and shifting their budgets to questionable social programs.
At this rate, perhaps by the time the next study is completed an American city may claim the crown as the most violent in the world. A great achievement for the United States surely.
