When it comes to public safety Austin liberals facilitate the crooks

 Red State:

Yet Another Democrat-Run City, Austin TX, is Learning that 'Defund the Police' Doesn't Work

...

 But Austin's policing problems began long before anyone heard of George Floyd. In 2017, the Austin City Council rejected the police contract for the first time. But in 2018, in typical liberal fashion, the city decided they would do something called "reimagining police oversight." What could go wrong there? Plenty, but police officers were able to get back under contract. Then along came the summer of 2020. In Austin alone, 20 officers were indicted for what Villarreal says was "doing their jobs" during protests following Floyd's death. That was when Austin followed in the footsteps of many other Democrat-run cities and slashed the police budget by $150 million, roughly one-third of the entire budget.

...

Putting the police budget on the chopping block did nothing to help a city that, in the last six years, has lost around 800 officers. In April, a WalletHub study showed Austin's homicide rate as the 15th highest in the nation. It's no wonder that Thomas Villarreal describes a police department stretched extremely thin. He told the "Fox & Friends" crew: 

"I've got about 1,475 officers in our police department and, you know, we're moving in the wrong direction. There's less and less and less resources to go out and do the job. I've got detectives who are pulled away from their caseload to just help answer 911 calls because we just don't have the resources to adequately police the city."

And it's not just individual citizens of Austin feeling the effects. Business owners say because of the lack of police response, they feel less safe, and they say it is driving away customers. Laura North is the co-owner of a hair salon and said, "You kind of feel helpless knowing that the police are going to take so long to arrive." Daniel Schwieterman owns a jewelry store and also appeared on "Fox & Friends" last August and complained about the time it took to get a police report. he said, 

...

"311 [non-emergency number] is not working. A jewelry store should not take 10 days to get a police report. This is for sure not working. You take away the police force and then ask us all not to have weapons or anything in our stores to protect ourselves. The crime rate is going to go up."

But Austin's latest Democrat Mayor, Kirk Watson, appears to not see any problem. Up until last month, the Austin Police Department was being assisted by Texas Department of Safety officers, who were responding to emergency calls to help out. Watson had praised the cooperation saying that the crime rate had gone down and response times had improved just two days earlier. But Watson has now suspended that partnership. His reason for ending a solution that was clearly working for Austin's residents and businesses? It didn't line up with "Austin's values." What may be closer to the truth is that the partnership did not line up with Austin's left-wing anti-police activists.

...

The only ones who love "Austin values" more than liberals are the crooks who are getting a significant upsurge in income from their crime spree.  I have seen no reports that would demonstrate cutting the police would reduce crime or make citizens safer.  It has been tried in other liberal cities with the same results as Austin.  It fits the definition of insanity to keep reducing police and expecting a different. result.