The article you posted is dated July 1st. The author's citation for the "defunding" bill was approved on June 24 [1], in which funds were redirected from the police to "violence prevention programs." Obviously both articles are talking about different things.
If I read this article correctly then the author's point is that simply the passage of a bill to be enacted in the future is the cause of increased crime in the present, which seems like a shaky argument to me.
Also I'm noticing that the ABC7News article says
>More than $17 million will be diverted from the police to violence prevention and other services not involving police. Another $3.6 million will be put into the new MACRO program which will basically be a civilian crisis response program within the Oakland Fire Department addressing those in mental health crises.
This means that even assuming this is a net decrease of $20.6 million to budget, this is still giving back only ~half the net increase from this year's budget. So we should still be up $16 million or so vs. 2020
The budgets shouldn't be compared in nominal terms because of inflation (6.2%) and the increased costs of pensions (more police officers retiring). Your article also says that 18% of the budget is now allocated to the police as compared to prior year's 20% (not accounting for the $17 million redirection)
Sorry, I don't see why inflation and pensions should be removed from police budgets and not from other budgets. I'm very uninformed about city budgeting but this feels a little "lies, damn lies, and statistics"-y to me. The change in proportional allocation is more convincing, but I'm too ignorant to understand the implications and nuances.
If I read this article correctly then the author's point is that simply the passage of a bill to be enacted in the future is the cause of increased crime in the present, which seems like a shaky argument to me.
Also I'm noticing that the ABC7News article says
>More than $17 million will be diverted from the police to violence prevention and other services not involving police. Another $3.6 million will be put into the new MACRO program which will basically be a civilian crisis response program within the Oakland Fire Department addressing those in mental health crises.
This means that even assuming this is a net decrease of $20.6 million to budget, this is still giving back only ~half the net increase from this year's budget. So we should still be up $16 million or so vs. 2020