Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last summer expressed support for the defund-the-police movement, claiming that "the spirit of it, I do support that spirit," and that if state budgets are properly allocated to various community services such as education and public transit, "you don't need all the money going to the police departments."
Well, it looks like Whitmer took a gander at the state's spiraling crime rates and decided that, in fact, police departments do need a good bit of money, at least if you want to stop criminals from doing crime:
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is pushing the Michigan Legislature to appropriate $75 million in federal funds to hire more police officers, increase their pay and fund programs to fight a surge in violent crime across the state...
"I'm proposing dollars to hire more police officers and ensure they've got great pay, good training and better resources to do their jobs effectively," Whitmer said. "We need more cops in communities experiencing a rise in gun violence that's been associated with this pandemic."
Michigan saw murders jump by more than a third last year, and witnessed an overall 12% spike in violent crime, so this is really an issue that Whitmer herself probably couldn't avoid, at least not without seriously imperiling her own prospects.
Still, you have to give credit where it's due: Many politicians have been more than happy to sign off on the whole defund-the-police thing in order to increase their own clout, so it takes a bit of humility to come back and admit you were completely and totally wrong.
Of course, it's also possible that Whitmer's request is itself a shrewd political calculation:
By an overwhelming 9-1, [Detroit residents] would feel safer with more cops on the street, not fewer. Though one-third complain that Detroit police use force when it isn't necessary – and Black men report high rates of racial profiling – those surveyed reject by 3-1 the slogan of some progressives to "defund the police."
"Defund the police" is rapidly becoming a politically toxic slogan for the progressives who adopted it. Expect more and more of them to backtrack in the months ahead.
