Milwaukee Mayor Johnson says the city “never defunded the police.” Is he right?

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde is criticizing large cities for how much they are spending on law enforcement.

As in, not spending enough.

Hovde tweeted out a clip of an interview on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show podcast on Feb. 25, 2024 where he mentioned conversations he had with Milwaukee voters and criticized the movement to "defund the police," calling it the "dumbest idea of the last 100 years." 

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson responded to Hovde on X, saying Milwaukee "never defunded the police." 

In his tweet, Johnson included a page of the 2023 proposed budget for the Milwaukee Police Department showing an increase in funding from the $280 million adopted in 2022, to more than $300 million. 

That’s a piece of evidence, but is it the full picture?

We contacted Johnson’s office for backup, and spokesman Jeff Fleming responded by using the Wikipedia definition of the phrase "defund the police," which describes it as "removing funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, healthcare and other community resources."

Previous fact-checks have described "defund the police" as a movement to reduce funding to law enforcement and invest in community services such as social services, youth services and public housing. 

Fleming said any reduction to the police department’s funding in the past was a result of "across the board cuts" or "transfer of significant numbers of employees out of MPD to the new Department of Emergency Communications. No money has been taken from the police and reallocated for other non-policing forms of public safety."

In previous budgets, positions within the police department also were eliminated through attrition.

Fleming also shared a chart from the city’s budget office showing funding for police at the highest levels since 2018 –  at $304 million in the adopted budget for 2024. We went back to each year mentioned in the chart and verified its accuracy. 

The lowest amount of funding the department received during that time was in 2022 when it received $280 million. 

Further, in 2020, several aldermen pushed the city to explore a 10% cut in the police budget for 2021, but no such budget amendments were proposed or voted on. 

That’s not to say police haven’t been negatively impacted by Milwaukee city budgets. 

The 2021 budget cut 120 police positions under then-Mayor Tom Barrett. Johnson, as Common Council president, was among those who voted in favor of the budget. 

Featured Fact-check

Jerome Buting

stated on April 11, 2016 in an interview

Wisconsin pays criminal defense lawyers who represent the indigent $40 per hour, "the lowest in the country."  

Also, Johnson’s tweet does not mention the number of sworn officers has decreased in Milwaukee from 1,864 in 2019, despite spending more on police. 

In this year’s budget, the Police Department’s average sworn strength would increase to about 1,645. The increase is a product of a requirement in a 2023 state law that boosted funding for local governments across the state but also required Milwaukee to increase police sworn strength. 

The city is spending more on police in this current budget, at $304 million, than any other department. And that was the case 15 years ago when the city was spending $230 million on police.

The total 2024 City of Milwaukee budget is $1.92 billion.

When responding to a claim about Democrats defunding the police, Johnson said Milwaukee "never defunded the police." 

The city of Milwaukee has continued to fund the police department through multiple budgets and for years no department has gotten more funding than police.

However Johnson does not mention the reduction in recent years of sworn police officers because of across-the-board cuts.

Our definition of Mostly True is a statement that is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. That fits here.