According to retired Police Chief Tom Weitzel, the Defund the Police movement isn’t dead — it just has a new face. Instead of protests and placards, things have moved to restrictions of proactive policing on the part of liberal city governments. Such city officials are increasingly stripping police departments of their authority and hindering policies to protect the community. For example, the city of Philadelphia announced last month that its police department would no longer respond to lower-priority calls for service. Similarly, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced that he won’t prosecute certain crimes and that jail should be a last resort. On the other side of the country, San Francisco has now “deprioritized” traffic stops. In America’s heartland, the SAFE-T Act has gutted policing in Illinois.

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In most cases, where the Defund the Police movement has turned violent or resulted in drastic funding and authority cuts in police departments, violent crime has spiked, and city councils have reversed their decisions and boosted police budgets. According to Weitzel: “Crime began spiraling in 2020, when the national murder rate rose by nearly 30%, which was soon followed by smash-and-grab crime trends on the West Coast, rampant car theft and carjackings in cities like Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and record-high homicides in cities like Milwaukee and New Orleans by 2022. Simultaneously, police departments nationwide experienced severe staffing crises as officers filed for early retirement or quit amid calls to defund in 2020 and as officers worked overtime as crime rates spiked.”

However, the movement has not stopped, but has instead grown, in the form of police being unable to do their jobs. As a result, policing has become frustrating in many cities. Apart from the aforementioned early retirements, recruiting is down as well. Many major police departments report shortages in recruits, sometimes resulting in desperate measures. For instance, Law Enforcement Today reports that the city of Los Angeles is hiring illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. under Obama’s DACA (Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals) program and who have not yet even become citizens as police officers. Minneapolis now has fewer than 300 police officers to respond to 911 calls, leaving many of the lower-priority calls with long wait times or else unanswered entirely. That city was the site of the George Floyd killing, after which its liberal City Council moved to disband the police altogether. This caused an immediate mass exodus of police officers, followed by a surge in violent crime, prompting the Council to reverse its decision and double its police budget. Three years later, however, the city has been unable to bolster its police force and repair the damage.

The Spiritual Root of the Movement
Everything in our visible world has a spiritual root, including the Defund the Police movement. No particular religion drives it, but rather a combination of forces. The movement went hand-in-hand with the Black Lives Matter movement, which turned out to be driven by a relatively small nonprofit on a mission to deconstruct “cisgender” society, dismantle law enforcement, and build a society on Marxist principles celebrating transgenderism. At the same time, Antifa, a loosely held-together student movement out of California opposing any form of authority, began to wage war on police in major cities such as Portland and Seattle and was allowed by the city councils to do so. Add to that the millions of illegal immigrants and the burgeoning drug trade and you have an almost warlike atmosphere that has made policing discouraging and downright dangerous in many of our major cities. When the Defund the Police movement was off to its violent start back in 2020, I wrote to 12 police chiefs to assure them of my prayers and those of many others. Quite a few wrote back and said they felt under siege from protesters and politicians alike. Among them were the chiefs of Austin, Texas; Chicago; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; New York City, Philadelphia; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco; and Seattle.

The spiritual root of these parallel anti-police movements and the shift toward soft-on-crime policies by woke politicians can be found in these two passages of Scripture:

“And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12);

For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved (2 Thessalonians 2:7–10).

The power of lawlessness is at work in our day, propelled by Satan, who is continuing to build a human world hostile to God and His law and absolute truth. Lawlessness erodes people’s respect for law, order, and the authorities that maintain them. More and more people break traffic rules. More and more people commit crimes. More and more people embrace everything fake and hate the truth. And more and more people are turning away from God because they see Christianity — and religion in general — as an impediment to an individual’s freedom to be whatever they want to be and do whatever they want to do.

How to Pray
With law enforcement becoming as frustrating and dangerous as it is (378 officers shot in the line of duty in 2023!), there are several things to consider for prayer:

• First, we must pray for God’s hand of protection over law enforcement, especially front-line officers.
• Second, we must pray that God will raise up a new wave of officers willing to serve our nation despite the risks.
• Third, we can pray that people’s growing safety concerns will swing the pendulum back toward respect for law and order and the authorities that protect and uphold them.
• And fourth, let’s pray for police command staff to creatively address the staff shortages and thwart crime simultaneously.

Even though it seems that God has removed His hand of restraint in many places, He does look for His people to intercede to bring His hand back. So, let’s unite our hearts in prayer and entreat Him to bring an end to the Defund the Police movement and its new face of restricting police authority.

Father, You have instituted the authorities that maintain law and order. We pray for them today. Protect them from violence, and boost their morale with a renewed sense that they are making a difference in our society, especially in cities where they are being attacked from all sides. Ignite in the hearts of all Americans a new desire for law and order and a respect for authority — especially law and order by Your design, that comes from living in Your kingdom. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Share your own prayers against lawlessness in the comments.

Remco Brommet is a pastor, spiritual-growth teacher, and prayer leader with over 40 years of experience in Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the U.S. He was born and raised in the Netherlands and pastored his first church in Amsterdam. He moved to the U.S. in 1986. He and his wife, Jennifer, live north of Atlanta. When not writing books, he blogs at www.deeperlifeblog.com and assists his wife as a content developer and prayer coordinator for True Identity Ministries. Jennifer and Remco are passionate about bringing people into a deeper relationship with Christ. Photo Credit: Chad Davis from Minneapolis, United States – Defund the police and military, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.