GOP-Led County Defunds Its Police Despite Statewide Crackdown

Texas lawmakers passed a law in 2021 penalizing big cities that decided to cut their police budgets. However, they didn’t consider that a small deep-red county would defund its police.

After George Floyd was killed in 2020 by a Minneapolis police officer, numerous activists demanded cuts to police budgets to allocate the money to social programs under the “defund the police” slogan. Texas’ biggest cities saw many protesters and lawmakers feared these liberal cities would cut their police budgets.

In 2021, they passed HB1900, only targeting big liberal cities where protestors were the most active. Under the law, cities that chose to defund its police would face financial penalties.

“Texas remains a law-and-order state,” Gov. Greg Abbott said. “These new rules will prevent cities from making reckless and downright dangerous decisions to defund the police.”

However the law didn’t consider other smaller cities or towns. Now a small Republican county has dramatically decreased the salary of its law enforcement officers.

According to an investigation by the Houston Chronicle, two weeks ago, commissioners in Loving County approved a 2025 budget slashing Sheriff Chris Busse’s salary in half and reducing constable Brandon Jones’ salary from $126,000 to just $30,000, on the federal poverty level for a family of four. In addition, the county also eliminated two of six deputy positions. 

The county’s top official, Judge Skeet Jones, explained in an interview the reason for the cuts: “Five words — bad behavior and poor performance.”

According to the Chronicle, these cuts could have been encouraged by personal feuds within the county. Constable Jones and Busse said the cuts were made because of recent election results, after candidates related to Judge Jones lost.

“It’s personal vendettas,” said Constable Jones.

Loving County is the least populous county in the U.S., according to census data. In 2020, there were 64 people in the county. This makes family feuds a common problem in the county, the Chronicle also notes that Loving could have one of the “higher intra-government squabbles-per-capita ratios” in the country.

The Texas Municipal Police Association protested the cuts and said it would take the dispute to state lawmakers once they convene next year. Tylor Owen, a spokesman of the association, said that the drastic cuts were because of apparent political differences “is the definition of defunding.”

While HB1900 penalized cities defunding police, Austin managed to decrease the funding of its police department in 2020, and diverted funds to social programs such as emergency medical services for Covid-19, mental health, food access, substance abuse programs, and more.