As crime in the United States continues climbing, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is looking to allocate $50 billion from President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion spending package to fund more police officers in localities and states.
On Tuesday, Cotton introduced the Fund the Police Act, obtained by Breitbart News, that would use about $50 billion in unspent funding from Biden’s American Rescue Plan to establish a “Law Enforcement Support Trust Fund” at the Department of Justice (DOJ) to continuously support federal grants to local and state police.
Likewise, Cotton’s plan would give $1 billion each to the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, known as Byrne JAG grants, and the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office grants.
Annually, the DOJ law enforcement trust created by Cotton’s legislation would be supplemented by $500 million to go toward Byrne JAG and COPS grant programs.
“Democrats are eager to rewrite history and hide their advocacy for ‘defunding the police,’ but creating a bailout slush fund and funding law enforcement are not the same thing,” Cotton said in a statement. “My bill will immediately fund two federal grant programs to support police officers and establish a trust to maintain these grants for decades to come.”
Rising crime has become a hallmark of Democrat-run cities.
In New York City, for example, there was a more than 99 percent increase in gun arrests in June compared to the same time last year. Likewise, grand larceny increased 32 percent, grand larceny auto increased 31 percent, and robberies increased 16 percent.
A study released in April found that the murder rate is skyrocketing in 12 American cities, all run by Democrats. In the first quarter of 2021, the national murder rate increased 24 percent compared to the same period in 2020.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.