Portland Cuts Police, Homicides Jump

Mayor Ted Wheeler, in lockstep with Portland City Council, made drastic cuts to the Portland Police Bureau budget for the 2020-2021 fiscal year starting July 1, 2020. The Gun Violence Reduction Team (GVRT) was on the chopping block and has been disbanded.”

The monthly average of 2.3 homicides (2015-2019) jumped to 15 homicides in July, 2020 as soon as the police reduction occurred. Portland didn’t introduce alternatives to what it cut.

If policing is not effective, defunding won’t cause crime to rise. If policing is effective, then defunding causes crime to rise unless the policing is replaced by alternatives that are at least as effective at crime prevention. Crime prevention effectiveness depends on factors like deterrence, citizen input, monitoring, apprehension, prosecution, judgment and punishment. If any one or more of these links in the chain of crime prevention is weakened or thought to be weakened or advertised to be weakened, criminal behavior can be expected to rise. This is why tepid, slow, toothless and ineffective responses to rioters and looters produce more crime. City and state officials who fail to discourage or even encourage criminal acts have the same effect of weakening the effectiveness of crime prevention. They signal a lower chance of detection, arrest, trial, judgment and punishment.

In the other direction, news of arrests of rioters made by local police and prosecutions by the Department of Justice, news of armed citizens protecting property, and news of rioters being wounded and killed have the opposite effect of deterring crime.

Other cities that are defunding police include “Baltimore, Philadelphia, Hartford, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Oakland, Milwaukee, Denver, Durham, Winston-Salem, Chicago, New York City and D.C.” This quote is wrong about San Diego, where police funding was increased. But this case is relevant because San Diego is a low-crime city: “San Diego’s Crime Rate Drops 1.3% in 2019, Lowest Among Nation’s 10 Largest Cities.”

This blog doesn’t look into each of these cases. However, a bit of empiricism suggests that some of these have already made headlines with increased crime rates. Milwaukee is already a very high crime city. On July 3, 2020, “Milwaukee city leaders note dramatic increase in violent crime”. In New York City, “Shootings soar 205 percent after NYPD disbands anti-crime unit.”

The debate at the local level is often very clear. In San Diego, lots of citizens lobbied for decreased policing in favor of higher wealth transfers. Amanda Chisholm said: “The already over-militarized, over-policed city of San Diego does not need additional funding directed to the Police Department. We need funding taken from the Police Department and given directly to people living in slum conditions — people living 10 to a one-bedroom house in City Heights.”

Do taxpayers want their taxes to go for policing or for wealth transfers? If Democratic cities choose wealth transfers over policing, do they reduce crime by more than the increase caused by reduced policing? The connection between less policing and higher crime is clear and direct, but the connection between lower income and higher crime is too ambiguous and complex to rely upon. Furthermore, these tradeoffs are not the whole story. Sound policing attracts productive people and businesses to a city. The city becomes an attractive place for people to have and raise children safely. Wealth transfers attract unproductive people who live off of others, and the taxes going for that purpose deter productive people from locating in that city. The long-run impacts of policing vs. wealth transfers are at least as important as the immediate tradeoffs.

It’s a good bet that defunding police or otherwise weakening the justice processes will cause higher crime to occur. Higher crime is already happening in such cases. It’s measurable and evident. The defunding event in Portland was a clear intervention with a clear result.

On the other hand, it’s not a safe bet that defunding police and shifting the funds to income giveaways and wealth transfers will result in lower overall crime rates. Poorer households sometimes experience higher crime rates (whites and blacks), but it’s not always the case (Hispanics) (see here). Correlation also does not show causation. Meta-analysis of many studies doesn’t provide much evidence even of correlation: “Income inequality in Europe had a small impact on crime (Mr = .171, k = 10), indicating that income inequality accounts for only 3% of the variance in crime outcomes.”

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9:30 am on August 30, 2020