sltrib.com

Letter: Defunding the police will only increase crime

I was surprised to see that the opinion pages were changed to the humor section. How else was the commentary by Brinley Froelich placed there? Defunding the police is exactly the wrong thing to do. While I agree that the police should be better trained to de-escalate some situations, defunding them would be a disaster. 

Let’s say they are defunded by 10%. I don’t think the people who commit crime would decide to commit 10% less crimes to make it a level playing field. The opposite would probably (will) be more likely.

Yes, police make horrific mistakes. The most well known is the George Floyd murder. She talks about 1,000 police-caused deaths. Two hundred and sixty police officers were killed in the line of duty in 2020, a 96% increase from 2019. They deserve mention. I don’t know if that increase is due, (in whole or in part) by defunding, but it gives one pause.

If Miss Froelich has her home vandalized, and there are significantly fewer police to respond in a timely manner, I guess she could call a social worker for a little talk therapy and to assess the crime. As noted in her piece, she is also a founder of Decarcerate Utah. Let me see if I have this straight, release a bunch of criminals and at the same time give the police less money?

What makes more sense than that!

Google the top five cities that have defunded and they have all had double-digit crime spikes, the highest being 44%. That’s not a coincidence, it’s a correlation.

Mike McManus, Salt Lake City