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U.S. cities that virtue signaled by defunding their police departments are seeing record crime levels, forcing many city leaders to rethink their basic levels of intelligence.

Here's what has happened in a few cities that voted to slash police budgets:

Homicide grew by 44% in New York, which had 1,531 shootings and 462 murders in 2020.
Homicides also increased 36% in L.A. to 350, leading the police chief to say "a decade of progress" has been erased.
Minneapolis, the center of the "Defund the Police" movement, saw a 46% increase in murders.
Oakland, California has seen a staggering 314% increase in homicides.
Portland, Oregon has seen murders triple.
Austin, Texas has had a 26% increase in aggravated assault reports.
Chicago saw a 65% increase in homicides from June 2020 to February 2021, despite arrests dropping 53%.
Philadelphia hit a 30-year-high with homicides in 2020, with 499 people murdered.
Even smaller cities like Louisville, Kentucky had a record high of 173 murders and is on track to surpass that this year.
The New York Times reported that many such cities are now expanding their police budgets to try to deal with these outcomes that absolutely no one could have seen coming.