Texas Will Penalize Cities That ‘Defund the Police,’ According to New Law

The State of Texas is taking action to ensure that the trend of rising violence in cities that ‘defund the police’ stops outside its borders. The Texas House of Representatives just approved a bill that will penalize cities that pass bills that strip law enforcement of funding.

“H.B. 1900 stipulates that cities with more than 250,000 residents that slash police funding will have their sales-tax revenue re-appropriated to finance the expenses of the Texas Department of Public Safety,” Yahoo News reported. “The faulted cities will also be prohibited from raising property-tax rates or utility rates, to prevent the municipalities from recouping the money losses.”

“The bill still awaits a final vote on the House floor before it can advance to the Senate,” the report continued. “The legislation was sponsored by Republican state representatives Craig Goldman, Will Metcalf, Greg Bonnen, and Angie Chen Button, as well as Democrat Richard Peña Raymond.”

The Houston Chronicle’s report appeared to take the side of ‘Defund the Police’ advocates.

“House Bill 1900 comes after a year of civil rights advocates calling on cities to reduce what they spend on policing and to reform police behavior,” the Houston Chronicle editorialized. “Those calls were spurred by high-profile deaths at the hands of police like George Floyd’s in Minneapolis and Mike Ramos’ in Austin.”

Most Americans are convinced there is an “epidemic” of police shooting unarmed black males in America. This widespread misperception is reinforced with misreportage, sensationalized reportage, missing context, and the lack of reporting on analogous cases.

In February, a survey was released that showed how many adults overestimate the number of adult unarmed black males were killed by police officers in 2019 (the last year with full data available). The Skeptic Research Center published the results, which were broken down by political ideology.

Of Very Liberal respondents, 14.29% said ‘about 10,000’ unarmed black males were killed by police, while 31.43% said ‘about 1,000.’ Liberals were slightly closer at 6.67% saying ‘about 10,000’ and 26.67% saying  ‘about 1,000.’ According to the database at Mapping Police Violence, this number was actually 27.

There is a much stronger explanation for fatal police shootings than racial bias: Arrest rates. The FBI’s 2019 Crime in the United States report breaks down arrests by racial demographic.

The proportion of arrests for Black or African American suspects compared to the Total of all arrests: 26.6%. This tracks almost perfectly with the odds that a Black or African American suspect is shot by police.

An analysis performed at DataBricks from 2015-2020 further underscores this proportion of fatal police shootings and provides more context:

• 51% White, 26% Black, 19% Hispanic, 2% Asian, and 2% Native American victims
• 23% of victims showed signs of mental illness, indicated by on-scene mental health crises or news reports
• 91% of victims were determined to be armed, with objects ranging from toy weapons to pepper spray to tasers to guns

The Washington Post’s police shooting database further underscores how rare it is that unarmed black males are shot by police officers. Its reported police killings of unarmed black males in 2019 is far below even the 27 reported by Mapping Police Violence. It is a total of 11 — fewer than a dozen cases.

The facts about police shootings haven’t stopped members of the radical extremist “Squad” from propagating myths to incite the left-wing base and stoke race riots. Besides calling for decreasing security in America’s most crime-torn communities, they are complete hypocrites.

“Members of the progressive-Democrat group in Congress called “the Squad” who have been pushing to defund the police, spent thousands of dollars on private security for themselves, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records reviewed by the Daily Caller,” Rodgers reported.

“FEC reports show Democrats New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Missouri Rep. Cori Bush each spent thousands of dollars on their own security,” the FEC filings show. “The payments were described in the FEC filings as either ‘security’ or ‘security services’.”

There you have it. The radical Democrats’ mantra: More security for me, less security for thee.

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