Elon Musk has warned Austin not to become a 'San Francisco copycat' after announcing that he is moving the headquarters of Tesla to the Texas capital.
'Austin should be its city, not a San Francisco copycat,' the world's richest man tweeted on Sunday in response to an article about Austin police budget cuts.
The report, published earlier on Sunday by Fox News, was about a proposal in Austin to expand the city's police department amid the city's record homicides in 2021.
'Proposition A' would require there to be at least two Austin police officers for every 1,000 residents, and would also provide officers 40 hours of extra police training each year on topics such as active shooter scenarios and weapon proficiency.
The proposition is a ballot measure included in the November 2 election, and comes after Austin City Council voted last year - in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests - to cut $150 million from its police department's budget.
Elon Musk has warned Austin not to become a 'San Francisco' copycat after announcing that he is moving the headquarters of Tesla to the Texas capital. Pictured: Musk gestures as he visits the construction site of Tesla's Gigafactory in Gruenheide near Berlin, August 13, 2021
'Austin should be its city, not a San Francisco copycat,' Elon Musk tweeted (pictured) on Sunday in response to an article about Austin police budget cuts
The amount represented a little more than a third of its total budget, and is instead being invested into other public services.
However, since then, the city has experienced a nearly 71 percent increase in homicides, according to the Fox News report.
The funding cuts also resulted in a series of changes to the city's police department.
Cadet classes were canceled, making it harder to recruit more officers into the force, and certain specialized units were trimmed. Meanwhile - by May 2021 - 911 response times rose by 30 percent due to staff shortages.
Spurred into action by the rising homicide rates, Austin's city council reversed course on the budget cuts and agreed a new budget that would see the city's Police department budget rise to $442 million for 2021-22, up from $309 in 2020-21.
Earlier this year, Texas governor Greg Abbott also signed a law that punishes cities for decreasing police department funding, meaning cities must allocate funding to police equal to their 2020 budges - or face penalties.
However, the local political action committee (PAC) Save Austin Now argues that the damage was already done, and are pushing Proposition A to further raise numbers.
'People here locally do not want to fund defund-the-police efforts. They do not want to defund the police,' Save Austin Now co-founder Matt Mackowiak and long-time Republican activist told Fox News.
In San Francisco, meanwhile, Mayor London Breed last year announced plans to divert $120 million from law enforcement to other services that work to tackle inequities faced by the city's Black community.
These areas included housing, health, economic opportunity and education, Mayor Breed said at the time.
However, while these areas have seen funds directed their way, questions have since
