This jump in homicides follows last August’s vote by Austin city council to defund the police, reallocating 30% of the budget — some $150 million in all — to areas such as food access and something called “violence prevention”.
Since this is all rather inconvenient for the narrative, Austin’s murder boom has led to a fair bit of chin scratching in the media. For instance, in this interview with Austin police chief Joseph Chacon, the writer states twice that murder is on the increase in all major American cities, giving the impression that something strange and inexplicable is going on. Mysterious “crime experts” are mentioned who posit that people may be murdering each other from pandemic stress and economic uncertainty, although given that overall crime is down since 2010, “pandemic stress” must be quite selective in how it causes people to break the law.
Although it is true that many American cities have seen an increase in murder this year, even the slightest digging shows that not all homicide jumps are equal, especially in Texas. No other city has come close to seeing the murder rate almost double in 2021, and only Austin defunded the police. Dallas, in fact, has seen a decline in homicides, so it’s not as if we are looking at an immutable law of nature.
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