Police departments perform urgent services, like responding to 911 calls, they performative proactive policing patrols, and, lastly, they do assorted non-critical community stuff. When you start defunding the cops, guess which gets defunded first.

In Minneapolis, the home of the police defunding movement, the results are unsurprising. At least to anyone except proggies.

Stung by budget constraints and growing calls for reimagining public safety since the killing of George Floyd, Minneapolis police officials are considering sharp cutbacks to popular community-oriented programs like the Police Athletics League and procedural justice to avoid making cuts elsewhere.

Ironically, this is exactly what police critics want more of, community politicing, but that gets cut first.

Since June, 35 officers have retired or been terminated and dozens more may soon be temporarily sidelined on medical furloughs. Officials worry the resulting shortages could affect the department’s ability to adequately police the city amid rising crime… With the recent departures, the number of MPD officers has fallen to about 825 — out of an authorized strength of 888 — which includes a class of 31 rookie officers who just hit the streets. 

MPD insiders say this will likely involve scaling back or disbanding the procedural justice and community engagement units, as well as the PAL program — which runs youth sports teams across the city — in order to preserve a more essential function: responding to 911 calls. If those units do fold, most of those officers would likely go back to patrolling the streets, joining school resource officers, who returned to working out of a squad car after the department lost its contract to work in city schools.

So defunding the police actually leads to more cops on the street, and fewer cops engaging in social work, to stem the tide of violence from the Black Lives Matter riots.

Mission accomplished.