As Washington recognizes police week, politicians are making clear that the days of “Defund the Police” are firmly in the past.
The rallying cry of the 2020 election has been banished from all but the most extreme liberal corners of progressive activism, with everyone from President Biden to big-city Democratic mayors now embracing more police and decrying the recruiting crisis at many departments.
Mr. Biden, speaking Wednesday at a monument to officers who were killed, called police the “very best of America” and said he’s been backing them “since day one of my presidency.”
On Capitol Hill, House lawmakers rushed this week to pass bills to make it easier for localities to spend federal money to hire police, study anti-police violence and toughen enforcement against youth crime in the District of Columbia, which is under Congress’s direct jurisdiction.
The cop recruiting and anti-police violence bills drew strong bipartisan support, though the D.C. crime measure and another bill to require Homeland Security to detain and try to deport illegal immigrants who commit crimes drew far less Democratic backing.
Democrats who once championed defunding now say it’s a thing of the past.
“You all still talking about that? Why are you still talking about that?” Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat, told The Washington Times. “That was from years ago.”
Mr. Bowman came to Congress as a defunding advocate but now says the issue is more nuanced.
“Listen, this is about a public health approach to public safety,” he said, characterizing his goal as “accountability” rather than defunding.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who once championed a proposal to replace Minneapolis’s police force, ducked questions about the defund movement on Wednesday.
“I don’t have thoughts, I’m sorry,” she told The Times.
The rethink comes after a pandemic-era wave of violent crime that even touched members of Congress, with one lawmaker assaulted in her apartment building and another carjacked at gunpoint.
Rep. John Rutherford, Florida Republican, said Democrats want to put their defund dalliance in the past.
“They’re backtracking because they see all the crime. That’s the result of their policy,” said Mr. Rutherford, the former sheriff in Duval County.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew, New Jersey Republican, agreed.
“They realized there was a backlash to it and they looked at the statistics and realized when you defund the police your crime rate goes up,” he said “So I think they’re starting to get it.”
Still, he said, he sees signs that Democrats aren’t as enthusiastic as Republicans.
“They still are diminishing in some ways and demeaning and that’s why there are record low numbers of people applying for the job of being a police officer,” he said.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, also said he doesn’t think Democrats have fully learned the lesson, despite a political cost.
“Their anti-police attitude has cost them in a number of elections yet they still coddle that anti-police and pro-criminal attitude,” he said, citing in particular illegal immigration and Democratic votes against get-tough policies for migrants who were given catch-and-release then ran afoul of the law.
The defund movement had some limited accomplishments, with local politicians in deep blue jurisdictions cutting police funding. But as the pandemic crime wave peaked, pols reversed themselves and started adding money back into budgets.
In a sign of just how far the politics have flipped, it was Democrats on Wednesday who accused the GOP of trying to defund police through broader attempts to tame the federal deficit.
“At every single juncture, when Republicans have had a chance to put their money where their mouth is, they have shown that all their pro-police rhetoric is just that — rhetoric,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, Massachusetts Democrat. “They will say whatever they need to win political support from police, and then hope the cops don’t notice when they vote to gut their budget.”
The defund movement’s failure has been studied by the left, with some saying it was a befuddling slogan that turned off middle America. Some analysts say the point was reform, but that got lost in the weeks and months after George Floyd’s murder.
Other defund activists saw promise in the movement but feel betrayed by Democratic Party leaders, with particular blame going to Mr. Biden.
In the 2020 campaign, as other part politicians were flirting with the idea, Mr. Biden declared it a non-starter.
And, with the exception of some aspects of immigration enforcement, he never tried any serious budget-cutting for law enforcement at the federal level.
Vice President Kamala Harris was more of a fan in 2020. While not embracing the totality of the calls, she helped raise money for the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which bailed out people involved in the chaos in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd. She also praised Los Angeles when its mayor proposed cutting $150 million from the police budget.
A year later, Los Angeles reversed course and began adding money back.
• Jeff Mordock and Alex Miller contributed to this article.