George Soros Just Dropped Half A Million Dollars To Oppose Hiring More Police In Austin

George Soros, the man whose money helped install radical leftist Jose Garza in the Travis County DA’s office, is so displeased with the push to put more police back on the streets of Austin that he’s dumped half a million dollars into the fight against proposition A.

The billionaire benefactor of progressive causes across the country, George Soros, has waded into the political fight over Austin’s police staffing — pumping a half-million dollars into a campaign to defeat Proposition A.

Among other reforms, Proposition A would establish a minimum staffing level for the Austin Police Department (APD) of 2 officers per 1,000. Earlier this summer, APD was floating around 1.2 officers per 1,000 residents. From current staffing levels, it’d require the hiring of roughly 500 officers.

APD is suffering not only from a dearth in approved positions compared with its staffing level two years ago, but also from rampant attrition within its ranks, averaging 15 to 20 departures per month this year.

According to the Austin American-Statesman’s Ryan Autullo, the Open Society Policy Center, one of Soros’ advocacy arms, gave $500,000 to Equity Austin which opposes Proposition A.

The proposition is on the November ballot for Austin voters and is openly opposed by Mayor Steve Adler, Councilmember Greg Casar, and the city’s numerous progressive activist groups who each pushed for the $150 million APD budget cut and redirection last year.

Here’s the filing document showing the filing. And they’re not the only ones opposing Proposition A:

As I’ve written before, the hard left opposes adequate funding for policing because it’s much harder for them to rake off money from policing than various “Social Justice” initiatives for which their bureaucratic functionaries control checkbooks. And because they view police officers (probably correctly) as competing institutions of legal force and legitimacy that stand in the way of complete overthrow of capitalism and the current American constitutional order and its replacement with the neo-Marxist/Social Justice/Critical Race Theory “successor ideology.” To them, soaring Austin crime rates are a sign of their success.

All the more reason for ordinary Austinites to show up and vote in droves for Proposition A.

(Hat tip: johnnyk20001.)

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4 Responses to “George Soros Just Dropped Half A Million Dollars To Oppose Hiring More Police In Austin”

  1. Wendel Wilkie says:

    Why do they always say that Soros gives money to “progressive” causes? There’s nothing progressive about anything he does, he supports degenerate causes only.

  2. Formerly TigerHawk says:

    Austin resident here… the average city over 500,000 in population has 2.4 officers for every thousand in population, so the Austin proposition that would push up the count to 2.4/1000 would still leave us 16% below the average for cities of our size.

  3. […] plenty of out-of-state money (including half a million from George Soros), Austin Justice Coalition and their allies managed to deliver a resounding defeat to Proposition […]

  4. […] Soros money successfully stopped the re-fund the police movement in Austin […]

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