Five years after the seismic events of 2020, America’s largest cities are still grappling with the aftershocks of the “defund the police” movement. From New York to Chicago, Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, the twin crises of rising crime and shrinking police forces have become front-and-center issues in local politics and daily life. The debate over policing has shifted dramatically, with prominent politicians now distancing themselves from earlier calls to cut police budgets—even as the consequences of those decisions continue to unfold on city streets.
Nowhere is this shift more visible than in New York City, where the mayoral race has become a flashpoint for the larger national conversation. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor and a self-described socialist, has found himself under intense scrutiny for past statements. In 2020, at the height of the George Floyd protests, Mamdani tweeted, “We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.” He went further, writing, “There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked & corrupt. Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence.” According to FOX 5 NY, Mamdani also linked police defunding to “queer liberation” and called for a “socialist city council” to make it happen.
But in the wake of a tragic shooting at 345 Park Avenue on July 26, 2025—which claimed the life of NYPD Officer Didarul Islam and four others—Mamdani has been forced to clarify his current position. At a National Night Out Against Crime event on August 5, Mamdani told reporters, “I’ve said that since the beginning of the campaign, it is my belief, and whenever there have been tweets that have been cited from many years ago before I was an elected official, I’ve made very clear, as I said last week, that those are out of step with my positions as a candidate.” He added, “I am not defunding the police; I am not running to defund the police. Over the course of this race, I’ve been very clear about my view of public safety and the critical role that the police have in creating that public safety.”
This about-face comes as New York faces a policing crisis of its own. According to the New York Police Department, over 1,000 officers left the force in the first three months of 2025 alone—a staggering 91% increase in retirements compared to the previous year. The city’s police force is projected to shrink to just 29,000 officers by year’s end, the lowest number since the 1990s. The 2024 budget plan slashed the next five police academy classes, meaning no new officers will graduate for at least five years. The exodus is not new: over the last decade, New York City has lost more than 15,000 officers. A November 2024 survey from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice revealed that nearly a quarter of current officers want to leave “as soon as a feasible opportunity arises.”
The consequences are felt in every borough. The average police response time for critical crimes has ballooned to around 10 minutes, up from 6.8 minutes in 2019, as reported by the city government. This delay can mean the difference between life and death in emergencies—and it’s fueling public anxiety about safety.
Other major cities are experiencing similar struggles. Philadelphia, under Mayor Cherelle Parker, ended 2024 with 1,500 fewer officers than budgeted. The city’s 5,021 officers are well short of the 6,380 needed for its 1.5 million residents, according to The Philadelphia Citizen. Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel has warned that to restore the force, the city would need to recruit 75 officers every six weeks for years. Parker’s 2025 budget offers funding for only 400 new officers, leaving over 1,000 positions unfilled.
Chicago’s situation is equally dire. The city has lost more than 1,300 officers, and the average career at the Chicago Police Department now lasts less than three years. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, recruitment has plummeted: while the department hired 1,258 new officers in 2018, that number dropped to just 103 in 2024. Former Riverside Police Chief Tom Weitzel lamented the lack of interest in public service among younger generations, recalling, “When I took the exam in Riverside, there were over 300 people that attended... When I left, the last exam... 10 applicants showed up.”
In Cincinnati, the issue made national headlines after a white couple was attacked by a black mob downtown last week. The city’s police force is already stretched thin with about 1,000 officers—just 60 shy of the minimum needed—but could be short nearly 180 officers by the end of 2025, according to WLWT-5. Council Member Seth Walsh stated bluntly to WKRC-TV, “Talk to any police officer, talk to any citizen out there. We need more officers, period. The officers we have now are overworked. They’re stretched too thin.”
Pittsburgh’s police staffing is at a 20-year low, with just 755 officers employed and only 269 assigned to patrol beats, TribLive reports. The city lost 205 officers in the last two years, and Mayor Ed Gainey has reduced the budgeted number of officers from 900 to 800 since taking office in 2022. In a move that alarmed many residents, the Pittsburgh police announced in 2024 that they would no longer personally answer non-emergency 911 calls between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m.; those calls are now rerouted to a telephone reporting unit. City Councilman Anthony Coghill described the situation as “frightening.”
Amid these struggles, anti-police sentiment among some public officials and activists has persisted. In Pittsburgh, Chief Operating and Administrative Officer Lisa Frank posted in 2020, “Why do we continue to fund these police departments? I am certain that black and brown communities could use the same resources to develop and fund real public safety for everyone.” In New York, Mamdani continues to defend his December 2024 call to disband the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG), a special unit focused on crime suppression and crowd control. He argues, “Disband the SRG, which has cost taxpayers millions in lawsuit settlements + brutalized countless New Yorkers exercising their first amendment rights.” The New York Civil Liberties Union supports this move, citing a “history of racial bias, misconduct, and violence against protesters.”
As the campaign trail heats up, Mamdani has tried to find middle ground. He now promises to maintain the NYPD’s headcount, but wants to reduce overtime spending and create a new Department of Community Safety to handle mental health crises and homelessness—an initiative with a $1 billion price tag. He told reporters, “Forced overtime” is driving officers away, and he wants to “empower police officers to respond to serious crime and hire mental health professionals to respond to mental health calls.”
Whether these reforms will be enough to restore public trust—or stem the tide of resignations—remains to be seen. But as cities across America confront rising crime and dwindling police ranks, the debate over how best to keep streets safe is far from settled.
