Some Democrats are still championing Black Lives Matter’s “defund the police” movement.
However, many others abandoned the cause – at least publicly – because they realized it was a political loser for them.
But now officials in this blue city are waking up to the devastating effects of their police department defunding policies.
History of Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter started as a social media hashtag back in 2013 following the acquittal of Hispanic George Zimmerman, who killed black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in self-defense.
It pushed the false narrative that America is currently systemically racist and the hateful lie that police officers are out on the streets looking for innocent black men to brutalize and murder.
It became a political movement the following year, after black high school graduate Michael Brown robbed a convenience store and then the 6’4” nearly 300 lb man beat the shop worker and tried to grab the gun of the responding police officer.
Officer Darren Wilson defended his own life by killing Brown; a grand jury, a federal investigation, and even a black Democrat prosecutor from St. Louis all independently investigated the incident and found Wilson acted appropriately.
This, despite the media backing the BLM lie of “hands up, don’t shoot,” which all evidence indicated Brown never said or did.
But none of that stopped BLM from violently rioting.
The protests and demands continued, and a formal Black Lives Matter non-profit was launched.
And then, in 2020, in the midst of the global pandemic, career criminal George Floyd, high out of his mind, resisted arrest and unfortunately died while being detained by Officer Derek Chauvin.
Despite a Minnesota jury bowing to violent threats and convicting Chauvin, BLM supporters hit the streets and rioted to the tune of tens of millions of dollars in property damage, hundreds of arrests for violent crimes, and the murders of at least 25 people.
But the so-called “journalists” in media outlets like CNN defended BLM, calling the riots “mostly peaceful protests.”
And the media also echoed the group’s call to “defund the police.”
Democrat politicians also kowtowed to the angry mob and repeated the “defund the police” refrain.
Washington, D.C. defunds the police
And some Democrat elected officials even implemented those policies.
Including those in our nation’s Capital.
Radical leftist Washington, D.C. city council members Brianne Nadeau and Phil Mendelson led the efforts to slash the metro police department’s budget.
In fact, $15 million was cut from the Washington, D.C. police department budget during the supposed “Summer of Love.”
They spent the next two years bragging about the cuts and promising more were to come.
However, they’ve now done a complete 180, and unlike some of their fellow party members, Nadeau and Mendelson’s conversion wasn’t just for political expediency but because of the tragic results of their social justice warrior virtue signaling.
Washington, D.C. council now calling the cops
In the first five days of August, there were at least 13 homicides in Washington, D.C. – the latest in surging violent crime rates plaguing the deep blue city.
Once again, Nadeau and Mendelson immediately decided to politicize a tragedy, though at least this time, their grandstanding is calling for the right thing.
The Washington Free Beacon is reporting that the far-left pair now wants to restore some of the funds to the police department so they can bring officer levels closer to the levels before the “defund the police” cuts.
According to the Free Beacon, Nadeau and Mendelson have even bragged about their efforts to try and get more police officers hired – a far cry from their line-in-the-sand stance just three short years prior.
However, do Nadeau, Mendelson, and the rest of the woke Washington, D.C. city council really think people will be itching to sign up to be cops when they know they’ll be thrown under the bus and targeted at the first moment it’s politically convenient to do so?