TX Governor Makes It Official: ‘We’re Going to Defund’ Cities That Defund Police

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is no longer allowing progressive cities to self-immolate via efforts to defund the police. This from westernjournal,com.

In an interview with Fox News, Abbott responded to a recent shooting in Austin by matter-of-factly stating, “We are going to defund the city.”

Earlier this week, Austin police took approximately 13 minutes to respond to a report of a man being shot in the head, according to KXAN.

Austin voted to defund its police department by $150 million last year.

Abbot compared the recent tragedy to the skyrocketing homicide rates in cities such as Portland, New York and Los Angeles, where diminished police forces have struggled against a rising tide of violent crime.

“Unfortunately, we had the same thing happen here in the state of Texas, where the city of Austin defunded police,” Abbott told Fox News. “Which is why you saw that tragic situation reported in Austin, Texas.”

“This is what defunding the police looks like,” Abbott said of the situation on Twitter.

Abbott also vowed to sign House Bill 1900 into law.

The bill effectively prevents cities from defunding municipal police agencies by drying up resources.

This would be done by prohibiting cities that defund police from annexing more territory, allowing residents of those cities to disannex themselves and ensuring that the cities pay for any state police assistance they require in order to shore up their law enforcement.

“Because Austin defunded police, we wanted to do two things in this session,” Abbott said.

“One, we wanted to make sure that there were going to be consequences for the city of Austin. The second is we wanted to make sure that no other city in the state of Texas would defund police.”

Abbott’s vision is setting him apart as a leader of the GOP.

If a progressive city chooses to place its citizens in danger by defunding the police, it should be cut off from the hand that feeds it. Plain and simple.

As for citizens freely disannexing themselves from such cities, Abbott said that citizens should have the right to choose to leave cities that take and take and give nothing in return.

“A LOT of residents in the City of Austin will soon have the chance to de-annex from their over-taxing, over-regulating, do-nothing-about-the-homeless city,” Abbott tweeted.

There are, no doubt, times when police budgets need to be negotiated. But there is rarely, if ever, cause to defund municipal police departments outright.

This was an excellent point by Abbott, perfectly clear and a kick in the teeth to the liberal progressives.

“In Texas, we don’t defund or disrespect our police,” he tweeted.

Certainly 2020 was a crazy year and perhaps 2021 will prove to be the year of correcting that which was made wrong.

Likewise 2020 was a dangerous year for police officers across the nation–something that should never have come about.

American’s ought to encourage our leaders to follow Abbott’s example and back the men and women in blue.