Opinion and Commentary By Donna Westfall – April 12, 2025
Just finished reading an article about a crime-wave emergency in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s so bad they’ve called in the National Guard for help.
I was wondering how long it would take for the predominantly “Defund the police” mentality would last before reality came charging home.
Not long. But let’s refresh our memories on why cities across America chose to defund their police force. It was the incident with George Floyd’s death who was Black. Need I say more? In case you forgot, a White Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, had Floyd on the ground and his knee on Floyds neck.
Not only did protests pop up nationwide, it also led to worldwide protests claiming police brutality, police racism and needing police accountability.
Let’s take a look around some other American cities and see what they reaped by defunding police and decriminalizing drugs starting with our state to the north, Oregon:
From the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Democratic controlled Oregon legislature decriminalized most drugs March 2020 (which included heroin and fentanyl) when 58% of the voters passed Measure 110. Four years later, the experiment was considered a failure. Why? According to one source it was because they didn’t have their treatment infrastructure in place.
As a result, addiction and overdose rates shot up like a rocket. The experiment ended on September 1, 2024 when the Democratic-controlled Legislature passed recriminalization laws.
Next up, Minneapolis. Defunded police by $8 million.
Los Angeles defunded police by $150 million.
New York City defunded by $1 billion.
What was the result? Crime skyrocketed. Addiction and drug overdoses skyrocketed. Police left for other cities.
Getting back to our neighbors in the north – Portland, Oregon; they cut their police budget by $15 million in 2020. Needless to say, crime and drugs ran rampant. People moved out. However, for 2024, Portland increased their police budget to a record high of $295 million.
Lastly, getting back to Albuquerque, New Mexico they did not “defund” their police. Instead they created a new Community Safety Department which is sorta like defunding the police except that 911 calls were to be handled differently. Too bad that the fentanyl crisis became out of control along with violent juvenile crimes. Their budget in 2020 was a little over $210 million. Their proposed budget for 2024 was up to $271.5 million. And, they still have to count on the National Guard to help reverse their crisis.
