2 in 3 voters say increasing police funding would lower crime: poll

The majority of respondents in a new poll said that increasing police funding would have an impact on decreasing crime.

Sixty-nine percent of respondents in the survey from Politico and Morning Consult out Wednesday said that increasing funding would decrease crime "a lot" or "some" while 22 percent said it would not decrease crime. Another 10 percent had no opinion, the survey found.

Twenty percent of participants said that decreasing funding for police departments would lower crime, and 68 percent said it would not.

Respondents were also asked about potential reasons for rising violent crime rates in the United States. Overall, 49 percent said that they viewed defunding the police as a major reason for the uptick in violence.

Pollsters noted that 36 percent of respondents viewed the pandemic's unique effect on mental health as a major reason for the uptick and 46 percent blamed lack of adequate funding for mental health programs.

The new poll was conducted Feb. 5-6 and included 2,005 registered voters. It has a margin of sampling error of 2 percentage points.

It comes as a recent report from the Council on Criminal Justice showed that homicides in major U.S. cities were up by 44 percent since 2019 and 5 percent since 2020.

Amid the rise in violent crime, some Democrats are looking to move away from the slogan "defund the police."

"The defund police movement is dead in New York City and good riddance," Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) said on MSNBC this week. "And any elected official who's advocating for the abolition and or even the defunding of police is out of touch with reality and should not be taken seriously."