The city council of West Hollywood, California, voted Monday night to cut the number of armed sheriff’s deputies by four, replacing them with 30 unarmed “ambassadors,” despite a crime wave and a national backlash over “defund the police.”
The Democrat-dominated haven, whose mayor once tried to ban Donald Trump from speaking in the city, and which honored porn star Stormy Daniels with the key to the city during her crusade against Trump, has seen crime rise 137% in one year.
Nevertheless, NBC Los Angeles reported, the city council voted 3-2 to cut police funding in deference to the “Black Lives Matter” movement:
During the council’s vote to restructure the city’s budget on Monday, the measure was only narrowly approved. It passed without the support of West Hollywood Mayor Lauren Meister, who has been a vocal opponent of reducing the Sheriff’s presence in the city.
The restructuring will leave WeHo with four fewer patrolling Sheriff’s Deputies. Two of those deputies will be removed in six months, while the other two will be removed six months after that.
The new budget reallocates the funds from those four deputies to Block by Block, which staffs unarmed, blue-shirted security ambassadors and provides the city with supplemental law enforcement services.
In 2020, Seattle’s then-mayor also opposed the city council’s plan to cut police but was unable to stop it from doing so.
Two years later, amid outrage about crime that saw San Francisco voters recall their district attorney and could see Los Angeles County do the same, the West Hollywood city council stuck to Democrats’ 2020 rhetoric and cut police funds.
At the same time, the UK Daily Mail notes, the council is increasing funds for other spending, such as a Russian culture festival that will omit the word “Russian” because of outrage over Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, and Pride flag crosswalks that have been updated with the colors of the transgender movement and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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