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In 2021, violent crime surged in the wake of a flood of calls by Democrats and left-wing activists to "defund the police."
The murder rate in 2021 soared to levels not experienced since the 1990s. Albuquerque, N.M., Louisville, K.Y., Philadelphia, and Portland, Ore., all experienced record-high murder rates in 2021.
POLICE UNDER SIEGE: 3 OFFICERS KILLED, 2 MORE WOUNDED IN WEEKEND BLOODSHED ACROSS THE COUNTRY
A procession carrying the body of the police officer that was fatally shot on Jan. 21. (Christopher Sadowski)
Although many factors likely contributed to skyrocketing violent crime rates in large cities across the country, one of the biggest was Democrats’ decision to cut budgets for law enforcement agencies, a choice many local governments are now in the process of reversing.
For example, New York City, which is home to America’s largest police force, had a budget of $5.2 billion in 2021, about 800 million less than it did it 2020. However, following a surge in crime, city officials voted in June to increase police funding by $200 million.
In addition to the thousands of everyday Americans who suffered because Democrats chose to slash police budgets (or to deny necessary funding increases), new data show police officers also suffered immensely in 2021.
According to figures recently released by the FBI, 73 law enforcement officers were killed by felonious activity in 2021, a 58.7% increase compared to just one year ago.
Even more shocking, my review of the FBI’s data shows that the number of officers feloniously killed in 2021 was the highest number recorded in at least two decades. The only year that came remotely close to matching 2021 was 2011, one decade ago.
Some of the surge in violence against police officers is likely a byproduct of the overall increase in violent crime that occurred throughout dozens of cities over the past year, but there’s much more to this story than first meets the eye.
In addition to tracking how many law enforcement agents have been killed by people engaging in felonious activities, the FBI also records the context within which the death occurred. For example, the FBI reports in 2021 eight officers died while in the pursuit of an alleged criminal.
Among the 20 categories of circumstances reported by the FBI, most revealed similar numbers in 2020 and 2021, but there was one that showed a shockingly high increase: unprovoked attacks, which the FBI defines as, "An attack on an officer that, at the time of the incident, was not prompted by official contact between the officer and the offender."
Twenty-four officers were killed in unprovoked confrontations in 2021 (32 if you include the category of premeditated ambushes).
In 2020, the combined number of deaths resulting from an unprovoked attack or ambush was 10. In 2019, it was just seven.
The number of deadly unprovoked attacks and ambushes on police in 2021 appears to be unprecedented. I couldn’t find a single other year in the data made available by the FBI online, which cover years going back to the 1980s, that came even close to matching the high figure reported for 2021.
More data and detailed interviews are likely needed to fully understand why criminals are targeting police at historically high levels, but it’s hard to imagine that the anti-police, left-wing narratives regularly espoused by talking heads and opportunist Democratic politicians didn’t contribute to the problem.
After all, if modern police departments are hopelessly racist institutions invented by white supremacists and the vestiges of chattel-slavery-era "paddy rollers" — a claim repeatedly made by America’s largest Black Lives Matter organization — it’s not hard to imagine why some particularly violent people might want to target law enforcement officers.
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Contrary to the claims made by many on the left, police departments are important for public safety and they need our support, now more than ever.
That doesn’t mean communities should reject common-sense police reforms. No innocent civilian should ever be unjustly harmed or imprisoned by a police officer, and if there are reasonable policies we can put into place to make those problems occur less frequently, lawmakers should pursue those reforms.
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But defunding the police and demonizing cops is clearly not the answer, as the latest data from the FBI proves beyond any doubt.
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