LETTER: Iowa Democrats aren’t defunding the police

Please put your thinking cap on to decide whether Iowa Democrats and Democratic public officials want to “Defund the Police” as Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird would have you believe.

AG Bird told the nation and Iowans “the Democratic Party is the party of defunding the police. They said it, they mean it, and they can’t wiggle out of it.”

This piece of flat-out political hucksterism was delivered in a speech to the Republican National Committee – but it has been a standard song of Iowa’s chief law enforcement officer for some time.

But where in Iowa is the real proof for what she said? In January 2017, the totality of GOP Trifecta politics came in and cut Democrats almost entirely out of budget policy. Now the Iowa GOP calls the shots almost entirely on law enforcement budgets – both at the state level.

With that kind of GOP governing power, why did Iowa’s violent crime rate increase at twice the national average – a 13.9% percent increase over the previous year – more than twice the national violent crime rate of increase? That’s according to Iowa Crime Statistics.

To make matters worse in a time of a rapidly increasing crime rate, a 2021 national study by Money Geek highlighted by The Center Square web page indicates the Iowa GOP literally forgot that we had law enforcement. In a 2021 survey, Iowa ranked 48th on state-level spending on police, and 51st (including Washington, DC) on corrections.

Were Iowa Republicans asleep at the switch? Or was Iowa’s GOP’s concentration on gutting public schools, public libraries and institutions not enough? The Iowa GOP’s dominance in Iowa politics has transcended 56 years since Bob Ray, then Terry Branstad and then Kim Reynolds were elected as Iowa governors. Only 12 of those 56 years had a Democratic governor, and none of those were recent. The pathetic level of funding for law enforcement in Iowa rests squarely with the Iowa GOP. They are the “DEFUND THE POLICE PARTY” that they tell us to be wary of.

And, for some counties, it will get even worse, simply because of the GOP’s property tax reform. According to state data, 33 Iowa counties will have to cut general fund spending (some dramatically) to meet the new general fund expenditure cap. So . . . did the Iowa GOP just give our property tax-funded sheriffs’ departments another DEFUND whack? Yup!