Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, who recently switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, criticized Democrats for being weak on violent crime and supporting the “defund the police” movement.
Johnson stated that Democrats often fail to acknowledge the problem of violent crime and take effective action to address it.
“What I’ve seen across the country, too often I think that Democrats primarily is what I’m talking about because that’s who controls most of the major cities in this country – 75 of the top 100 cities in the country are run by Democrats – the problem has become that Democrats were not willing, I think, to say that violent crime is a problem in their city and that it’s a problem that they could actually do something about,” Johnson said.
The most Texas story you’ll read today
Days after AG Ken Paxton was acquitted, the recently re-elected Democrat Mayor of Dallas Eric Johnson announced he is switching to the Republican Party
“America’s cities need Republicans and I’m becoming one”
Welcome brother! pic.twitter.com/2xLaUlrkrH
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) September 22, 2023
He highlighted his opposition to defunding the police in Dallas and claimed that the city has achieved different, positive results.
Johnson dismissed claims from a Democrat city council member that the city’s safety is due to the Democrat-controlled council, stating that the council eventually agreed with his crime-reduction policies.
He also criticized symbolic proposals to defund the police, which allocated funds for unrelated issues.
“In Dallas, I dug in pretty firmly against this whole idea of defunding the police and I said, ‘We’re gonna do things differently here,’ and we’ve had different results,” Johnson added.
“We were all Democrats at the time,” the mayor explained. “It was always a challenge and there were reasons why we had a lot of disagreements, there was a lot of coverage for a long time about a lot of the arguments and a lot of the debates that happened around Dallas City Hall around how we need to respond to requests to defund our police.”
Johnson emphasized the importance of law and order and fiscal conservatism in urban centers, expressing his belief that the Democratic Party does not represent these values.
He argued that Democratic policies embolden criminals and demoralize the police.
“The future of America’s great urban centers depends on the willingness of the nation’s mayors to champion law and order and practice fiscal conservatism,” Johnson wrote.
“Our cities desperately need the genuine commitment to these principles (as opposed to the inconsistent, poll-driven commitment of many Democrats) that has long been a defining characteristic of the GOP.”
He told Bream that the Democratic Party “doesn’t represent” his values regarding “law and order” because the Left has policies that “embolden the criminal element” in cities, including calls to “defund the police” and not prosecuting certain crimes. These policies, Johnson argues, “demoralize the police department.”
