A sign leftover from November's election in Bay Ridge accuses a Democratic council member of defunding the police. The only problem is that didn't happen — and experts say political misinformation has become so common it threatens the health of democracy.
“We knew we wanted to have a very loud and very clear message about who our opponent was,” said Fox, explaining how the idea for the sign surfaced during a recent phone interview.
The “defund” message was also part of Fox’s online strategy. The campaign plugged the theme using their Facebook page to link Brannan to instances of crime in the neighborhood, or the shuttering of small businesses and chain drug stores, which they also blamed on defunding the police. This message was used even though there were no police officers cut from the local precinct because of the budget vote.
Fox used the Council's budget vote in 2020 to link Brannan to the "defund" slogan. The partial truth is that Brannan did vote for a budget that shifted money away from the NYPD. The full truth is that people who were proponents of the “defund” movement voted against that budget for not shifting enough money away. And to vote against the budget was to vote against a host of other city services.
Other so-called cuts amounted to little more than fiscal sleight of hand, such as moving the school safety agents budget into the Department Of Education. Even then, the shift never materialized; the budget forThe city did cancel a new cadet class in July 2020, which meant that more than 1,000 new officers were not added to the force. But there was never a cut to the existing headcount.
During the campaign, Brannan said when he would talk through the “defund” issue with constituents, the ones willing to listen understood why the label was false. But often he never got that chance. He and his volunteers described a toxic political environment on the ground in the district, with vandals routinely marring the windows of his office. Fox said his campaign had nothing to do with those acts.
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