'Defund Police' movement is endangering officers' lives: Joe Imperatrice
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This is the third part of a Fox News Digital series about the Arabella Advisors-managed dark money network. Part I. Part II.
America's largest liberal dark money network houses a massive organizational hub used by far-left activists pushing to dismantle and abolish the police across the country.
The Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability (CRH) acts as a resource epicenter for progressive activists on police reform efforts, including abolishing and defunding the police. The CRH describes itself "as a resource for local advocates and organizers working to address the harms of policing in the U.S." that seeks to "cultivate community safety and accountability outside of the criminal legal system."
The hub sits under the umbrella of the most prominent dark money nonprofit networks in the U.S. managed by the Arabella Advisors consulting firm. Grants from George Soros' network indicate the anti-police group was set in motion the year before police defunding gained traction, which allowed it to pivot quickly and provide resources for the movement.
As part of its operations, the CRH provides research, data, reports, model policies, toolkits and "other resources to the field" while providing technical assistance to campaigns, according to its website. A memo written by CRH that "reviews alternatives to policing in the context of police abolitionist frameworks, offering insights and sharing successful strategies for advocates in the field" is included within the materials.
Screenshot of Community Resource Hub's 'Alternatives to Policing' memo. (Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability.)
The police abolitionist memo is one of 741 resources on the site for the local far-left activists. Many radical groups contribute materials, including No Cop Academy, Cops Off Campus Coalition, The Digital Abolitionist, and the Anti-Police Terror Project. The CRH says it does not necessarily support or endorse everything on its site.
CRH also directly works on projects regarding defunding police. The hub "houses and staffs" the website defundpolice.org in partnership with several national organizations.
"#DefundPolice means divesting from institutions that kill, harm, cage and control our communities, and investing in violence prevention and interruption, housing, health care, income support, employment, and other community-based safety strategies that will produce safer communities for everyone," defundpolice.org's website states.
"Even as demands to defund police are being dismissed and attacked, communities are continuing to fight for divestment of funds, power, and legitimacy from police and other violent institutions that fail to produce safety while looting resources our communities need to survive," the site says.
Additionally, CRH hosts weekly two-hour "invest/divest learning communities" attended by 40 to 60 organizers focused on "Budget Advocacy, Community-Based Safety Strategies, Police Fraternal Association Contracts, and Reparations for police violence."
Demonstrators hold a sign reading "Defund the police" during a protest over the death of a Black man, Daniel Prude, after police put a spit hood over his head during an arrest on March 23, in Rochester, New York. (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)
The hub also provides a Defund Police Fellowship that supports 16 fellows in 13 cities, which offers monthly trainings and "skill building sessions, weekly office hours with budget, campaign strategy, and communications experts, and a peer mentor program," according to the site.
"Violent crime is on the rise, and where is the multi-billion dollar Arabella Advisors network funneling their dark money? Into efforts to ensure that our communities have less police," Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, told Fox News Digital.
"It is astounding, but not surprising, that this shadowy network has created an entire pro-crime hub devoted to programs like 'Cops Don't Stop Violence' and 'Defund Sheriffs,'" Sutherland added. "These initiatives are the exact opposite of what communities across the country are desperately calling for."
Arabella Advisors spokesperson Steve Sampson told Fox News Digital last Friday that they're "dedicated to making philanthropic work more efficient, effective, and equitable."
"Our nonprofit clients hire us to provide HR, legal, payroll and other administrative services—and, like all service providers, we work for our clients, not the other way around," Sampson said. "They make their own decisions on strategy, fundraising, and programmatic goals."
The CRH is a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund, a nonprofit managed by the Arabella Advisors. The New Venture Fund does not report the group in its business records, but its relationship to the fund appears in grants from liberal organizations.
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The Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability appears to have launched its website around the time of George Floyd's death. (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)
A nonprofit in George Soros' network, the Foundation to Promote Open Society, contributed $4.5 million to the New Venture Fund for the CRH in 2019 and 2020, according to the Open Society Foundations' grant database. A half million dollars of that cash went towards creating the CRH's Budgeting Academy program, "a year-long fellowship to train community safety advocates in how to advocate around their local municipal budgets," the grant states.
While Soros' first grant went to the hub the year before the defund movement gained steam following George Floyd's death in May 2020, internet archives indicate CRH's website went live around that time. A cached version of the site from late May 2020 shows it appears to have initially launched with around 400 resources on topics such as police accountability and alternatives to arrests.
Soros has funded dozens of progressive prosecutor candidates as part of his efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system. Another nonprofit in his network, the Open Society Policy Center, pushed $500,000 into an unsuccessful activist effort to dismantle and replace the Minneapolis Police Department in 2021.
Billionaire investor George Soros speaks to the audience at the Schumpeter Award in Vienna, Austria June 21, 2019. (REUTERS/Lisi Niesner/File Photo)
"Open Society is a longtime funder of efforts to secure racial justice and equity," an Open Society Policy Center spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital. "We're proud to support local organizations who are engaging their elected leaders, city officials, and neighbors on how best to achieve community safety and well-being."
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"This has included a wide range of approaches to public safety and we defer to the judgment of our grantees on what works best to achieve safe and healthy communities," the spokesperson said.
In addition to the New Venture Fund, Arabella Advisors manages the Sixteen Thirty, Windward and Hopewell funds, all of which act as fiscal sponsors to other liberal nonprofits by providing their tax status to the nonprofits housed beneath them.
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The four Arabella Advisors-managed funds combined to collect $1.6 billion from anonymous donors in 2020, their tax forms show. They combined to disburse nearly $900 million in 2020.
The CRH did not respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.
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