By a 3-2 margin, the West Hollywood City Council approved a budget on Tuesday that will cut police funding. Not a particularly wise decision considering the Los Angeles County crime rate has soared by 137 percent over last year.
This decision means there will be “up to five fewer Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies on patrol,” according to Fox News.
Even more egregious, the budget increases funding for the city’s Russian Arts festival. But, priorities.
The city’s mayor, Lauren Meister, one of the two dissenting votes, issued a statement to Fox which said, “Most of the residents and businesses I have heard from are opposed to cutting the Sheriff’s budget. They are outraged that people and organizations from outside our city are dictating to Council how to run our city. The narrative that we can have ‘either Sheriff’s or social services,’ or ‘either Sheriff’s or unarmed security teams’ is false.”
Councilman John Erickson, who also voted against the new budget, told Fox, “Community safety is our number one concern. When I’ve heard from countless residents about how they want to feel safer, that involves comprehensive planning and something that is not just drawn out over a decision.”
Council member Lindsey P. Horvath, defending her vote, told colleagues at the meeting, “Prioritizing people’s safety doesn’t just mean people with badges and guns on the street. We have to find another way to keep our residents safe in a way that is affordable.”
Mayor Pro Tem Sepi Shyne said the funds would be reallocated to the city’s “Block by Block” program. According to the report, this involves using “unarmed security ambassadors” to supplement law enforcement services.
Shyne said, “We have all talked for two years about re-imagining policing and reimagining policing means reallocating funding and that’s exactly what that means – you can’t just say it without actually doing it. Period.”
“In my mind, this is an increase of safety services with 60 additional eyes on the street working directly with the residents and the sheriff and code compliance and our social services providers and two fewer deputies this fall,” Councilman John D’Amico told Fox.
Data analysis website Neighborhood Scout rates the city an “8” on the crime index scale. The safest cities in the US receive a score of 100. This rating means that West Hollywood is “safer” than just 8 percent of all other US cities.
Moreover, the number of violent crimes in the city per 1,000 residents stands at 5.76 vs. 4.4 statewide and 4 nationwide.
The site also reports the number of crimes per square mile. In West Hollywood, that figure is 753. This compares to 77 statewide and 26.9 nationwide. Obviously, the dramatic difference is due to the dense population of this city vs. the more sparsely populated areas of the state and the country. But it still makes a statement about the city’s crime problem.
The defund the police movement, which began after the death of George Floyd in May 2020, has highlighted the inverse relationship between police funding and the crime rate. It boggles the mind that council members in a city with an outsize crime rate would vote for a budget that reduces resident safety.
But, as they say, you can’t fix stupid.
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