Governor Gregg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, has had to intervene to save the citizens of Austin from their own elected representatives after Austin City Council voted to, of course, defund the police.

FNC: “After signing a law that would prohibit cities within Texas to defund the police, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott told ‘The Faulkner Focus’ on Tuesday that Austin should face consequences for its move to cripple local law enforcement.

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“The governor retweeted a post from Kenneth Casaday, the president of the Austin Police Association, over the weekend that was critical of the response time for a shooting call early Sunday. The governor retweeted a post from Kenneth Casaday, the president of the Austin Police Association, that was critical of the response time for a shooting call early Sunday. Casaday said the call came in at 5:35 a.m. and there were no units available in the city to respond for 12 minutes. He said the victim suffered a critical injury after being shot in the head. Police finally arrived at the scene at 5:51 a.m.”

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Abbott: “Well, the reason it’s stronger is because, as you pointed out, I’m about to sign a law that will ensure that cities in the state of Texas will not be able to defund the police. First, the context: and that is that you pointed out, what’s going on in Minneapolis, where it is both a tragedy and a disaster. What’s going on for the residents of Minneapolis because of the defunded police and you’ve seen the same thing in Portland and Seattle and Chicago and New York, et cetera. Unfortunately, we had the same thing happen here in the state of Texas where the city of Austin defunded police … and because Austin defunded the police, we wanted to do two things in this session. One, we wanted to make sure that there were going to be consequences for the city of Austin. The second is we wanted to make sure that no other city in the state of Texas would defund police.”

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Austin City Council voted last year to take up to $150 million from the police department. The city also reduced the department’s operational budget by about $21.5 million. And thus city police can’t properly respond to the shooting noted above. That is the folly of the defund the police movement.

We understand Abbott, as governor, has a responsibility to protect fellow Texans from the irresponsibility of radical Democrat Austin officials. But personally, we’d rather see Austin completely defund their police department and let the chips fall where they may. Let them reap what they sow. It recalls what my hero and favorite journalist H.L. Mencken said about the process of electing people to office like the Austin City Council. “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”