George Soros Adds to Austin Police Shortage Woes

The Austin, Texas Police Department is so short-handed that it is instructing residents with non-life-threatening emergencies not to call 911, yet progressive globalist billionaire George Soros is pouring money into a campaign to defeat a local ballot measure to hire more officers. According to financial records reviewed by Fox News, "Soros’ Open Society Policy Center last week donated $500,000 to Equity Austin, a group that is working to defeat Proposition A."

“Proposition A, an Austin ballot proposal for the Nov. 2 election backed by the group Save Austin Now, would require at least two Austin police officers for every 1,000 residents and would provide officers with an additional 40 hours of police training each year on topics such as weapons proficiency and active shooter scenarios,” Fox News reported Oct. 3.

Big Money Agenda, Little People Pain

It is local residents who will feel the true cost of Soros' spending spree. As Liberty Nation’s Leesa Donner noted on Oct. 3:

“One longtime Austin resident told Liberty Nation, ‘I hate these people [the city council]. They know they’re putting people in danger, and they don’t care because it won’t affect them.’ Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday reports a dire shortage of new officers because the city no longer has a police academy. ‘Probably about 95% of the time our shifts don’t meet minimum staffing … and that is the reason they’ve started cutting back on what types of calls are answered,’ Casaday told Texas news outlet The Center Square.”

Soros has long held a special interest in “criminal justice reform.” He has spent millions getting leftist district attorneys elected in major cities throughout America as part of a broader plan for justice reforms.

Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, widely considered to be one of the most radical DAs in the nation, was one Soros success story. Krasner drew major heat in January after a 25-year-old walking his dog one block from his home was brutally murdered. One of the two men arrested for the crime had been released from police custody on bail just two weeks earlier. He was being held for an armed carjacking and had attacked a jail guard while briefly incarcerated.

Carnage in the Streets of Gotham

Such cases have not phased the activists funded by Soros in the slightest. A tale of two New York City newspapers in recent days speaks volumes. It would be downright comic if not for the ominous implications to innocent civilians. “Man of Steal,” screamed out the enormous page-one headline on Oct. 3 editions of The New York Post. From the article:

“With 46 arrests for retail theft this year alone, this Man of Steal leads NYC’s record-shattering shoplifting surge.

"Were he the supervillain in a heist movie, Isaac Rodriguez, 22, would be called Sir Isaac Lootin.’

"But the real-life, allegedly violent bandit has no moniker — just a rap sheet 74 offenses long, dating back to 2015, according to police sources.

"The King of Queens Thieves has been arrested 57 times this year alone, including in a vicious stabbing, police sources told The Post.”

Rodriguez is a virtual one-man crime wave running wild in the streets of New York. He poses a threat to anyone who may cross his path. Yet, if a Soros-funded group active in the Big Apple has its way, prison is the last place he would be.

“Start decarcerating now” reads the headline atop the Sept. 28 op-ed in The New York Daily News written by Jullian Harris-Calvin. The author does not mince words. “First, now is a critical time for New York City agencies and elected officials to properly implement the state’s bail law by safely releasing the vast majority of jailed New Yorkers into their communities and, when bail is set, ensuring that it is affordable, as prescribed by law,” Harris-Calvin declares.

There’s more where that came from:

“The jails are full in part because local media embraced a baseless narrative that blames increased crime on statewide changes to the bail law and other criminal justice reforms, prompting elected officials to shy away from bold decarceration strategies. This narrative flies in the face of evidence showing that bail reform has not jeopardized public safety. As counterintuitive as it may seem, decarceration is actually good for public safety because it frees up money and resources to invest in communities and keep families together.”

“Harris-Calvin is director of the Greater Justice New York program at the Vera Institute of Justice,” a bio at the end of the opinion piece states.

The Vera Institute is a radical organization dedicated to fighting against “overcriminalization.” Life-long leftist activist Herb Sturz, Vera’s founding director, was the first president of Soros’ Open Society Foundations when it was created in 1993. “From 2016 to 2019, the VIJ received over $10 million from Open Society Foundations,” a dossier on Vera compiled by watchdog website Influence Watch reveals.

Soros is going into U.S. cities and wreaking havoc with their social fabric to advance his progressive globalist agenda. The mayhem he unleashes on those living there is tangible, quantifiable ... and largely unreported by dominant media outlets. "It sickens me that out-of-town billionaires are able to swoop into Austin to fight against citizen-led ballot initiatives," Austin City Council member Mackenzie Kelly said in a statement to Fox News. "The purpose of our city’s charter is to allow regular, everyday people to fight for what they believe in when the city council fails them."

~ Read more from Joe Schaeffer.