Short answer: NO! It did not.

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Long answer: (Hopefully not too long.)
As a former police officer, I would come on shift with either zero calls to respond to, or maybe one. I had time to gear up, do guard-mount, and go to my assigned area and get familiar with what’s happening. (This was a while ago, but hang in there, this will all make sense.)
We were right at required staffing levels to have everything covered. Some days we were busy, but that was NOT the norm.
My shift was 10 hours long. One hour pre-shift and one hour post shift, which left me with 8 hours to do my tour.
That’s what most departments were, up until this “Defund the Police” policy shift happened.
Here’s the impact:
Let's say you are the Mayor of Milwaukee Wisconsin. On average, the beat cop coming on shift, at full strength staffing, had 2 to 5 calls in their stack, averaged out over both days, swings, and nights.
Agency Statistics:

• Officers: 1,886 (based on latest public records search.
• Policing: 96.8 square miles
• Policing a Population of: 600,400
  To keep things simple, let's say they have 2000 staff members averaging $56,000 a year across all paygrades, officers and civilian support people combined.
  Let’s say, as mayor, you decided to reduce MPD’s budget from $295M to $278M. Which is a modest cost cutting measure: 5.8% With a budget that size, $17M doesn’t seem like that much. Right?
  What if 100% that budget reduction didn’t take one beat cop off the payroll? What if most of that budget cut was stuff you don’t even want your Police Department to be doing any more? What if that 5.8% was just plain cutting the fat? That’s fair! We are all into less money.
  What could you do with a $17M budget? I’m sure there’s a lot of good you could do in the city of Milwaukee to improve safety and security for residents that didn’t involve taking them to jail, right?
  One example, hire a bunch of social workers to help criminals find other means of supporting themselves and their people. You could train them to engage the community and intervein where tragic social and economic situations drive good people to do bad things. That makes sense.

Pause here for a minute. Ponder everything I just wrote. If the above where the case, then why are so many people suffering under this DEFUND movement?
Again, you are the mayor.
Your City and your Party applaud you for cutting the police budget. You created a new program with this awesome mandate. Everyone loves you. Until they look under the covers:

• The $17M you took from the cops and built this new program was immediately highjacked by three powerful city council members. They will not pass the agenda unless you put the people they want, in the leadership position of that program. FINE! Just get it done.
• The people put in charge of the program hired their people through the Milwaukee City Jobs portal.
• $17M paid for a Director; $120k yr. five PhD’s from University of Madison and Marquette, $600k yr.; 10 managers: $800k a year; and 20 first line supervisors: $1.4M yr.; a hand full of MSW’s; consultants; admins, and BSW’s totaling $10M; then the office space, training, and ongoing program management. There’s your $17M.
• The PhD’s who designed the program say that by 2025, crime will go down by 10% in the Milwaukee Metro area.
  Good, so far, Mayor. The police chief isn’t flaming you in the press and no officers were let go; AND you have a fancy new program to show for it. With the promise that the crime rate will be impacted.

Reality Sinks In
The City Council thinks this new program needs more buget. Initial results show a 10% recidivism drop with program participants. Public feedback on the program is positive. People like getting the help they need and these smart, conscience driving program managers are taking it all in the right direction.
The City Council is so encouraged by these results that they want more money to fund the success. Your chief says, “I gave you all I had, nothing more to give.” The City Council over rules your veto and scrapes another $20m from the police budget.
Now, instead of “full strength”, the MPD is 90%. They had to let some admins go, more so than officers. Now the officers, instead of a 1-hour pre-shift, it’s 1.5 hours pre-shift. Instead of 1-hour post-shift, the average is now 2 hours. The existing beat officers are now spending 13.5 hours at work, instead of 10 hours. (Their contract only pays them for 10, by the way.) Moral falls. Call stacks (That’s the number of un-answered calls on your screen when you get into your patrol car.)
Cuts reverberate in the department. Training Officers have less time to train rookies. Beat officers have less time to do paperwork. Supervisors have less time tend their squads because now their supervising more people. The SWAT program’s budget was slashed by 50% and now the guys on the team are taking their own time to “keep up” their training.
Here’s the sticky part. The 10% recidivism rate drop wasn’t due to the charms of an army of social workers descending upon a city. It was due to highly targeted case selection by a staff eager to please the program’s very visible director. With this new infusion of cash, now the program needs to justify itself by doing the real grunt work. Now they can’t be picky, they have to move into the trenches. Moving into the trenches is dangerous. The new staff, plus the existing staff quickly figures out that to continue to justify themselves, they have to create a slightly different mission statement that doesn’t put their people at risk, dealing with criminals.
So the second year, the director and their well-paid functionaries design a mission statement where they’re much more likely to be able to report success, and not get so dirty.
The second year shows even more promise, with a 15% drop in recidivism, plus an added bonus of 200 homeless people “recovered” from drug addictions. You are thrilled! You report this in the news. The press is having a field day.

The Chief comes in with his hat in his hands. The troops aren’t happy. Call stacks are at 12 to 15 and the days are 14 hours long. Crime has risen in all felony categories by an average of 7 to 20% with murders up 40%. The homicide division had 3 detectives quit and go to higher pay and less hours in Florida. The SWAT team disbanded with over 200 years of experience leaving to retire early or to go to fully funded programs with other departments. 10% of the beat officers just simply quit policing all together. Three Officer involved shootings resulted in 1 injury and one officer fatality just within the last 3 months. Officer sick leave and officer divorce rates were up by 19%. The injured officer list went from 26 officers per month on average to over 50.
The Chief says, “What are going to do about Cammy?” Your Deputy Mayor just briefed you about the officer’s widow wanting to sue the department for not giving her rookie officer husband enough training before upgrading him to Patrol Officer 1 and giving him his own car.
“I told the City Attorney to settle.”, you say to the Chief.
“I know you told him that. I also know that doesn’t solve the problem.”, says the Chief. “These numbers go nowhere but up from here.”
“I don’t understand.” You say, looking down at your legal pad as if something is being written down. “The new program was supposed to lower crime. They are having great success!”
“They are having great success!” said the Chief, “But they designed the program so that it isn’t the criminals that come to them for help. They are criminals, they don’t ask for help. They commit crimes. They are NOT safe people to be around. We had a good thing before you came and fixed it. The “broken window policing” model worked, because we were taking bad people off the streets, keeping them on their best behavior. Now the City is making a ton of money with “diversion” and “low bail” saving on incarceration costs, but have you ever asked us what the final tally was? What the impact was going to be? Did you?”
“You’re saying that the numbers I’m getting are self-justifying?” you ask.
“I’m not accusing anyone of anything. The marker is pretty simple. IF the MURDER rate is going up while my detectives are quitting, that’s not a good thing.” replied the Chief.
“What do you propose?”, you ask.
“Give me $300M and scrap the social do-gooder program, by selling it off to that private organization I told you about yesterday. They can do the same thing with half the money. Contract them. Their recidivism reduction record spans decades and they aren’t afraid to go into the hoods.” said the Chief. “I will take that budget and do REAL police work with the money. Improve the City Jail. Hire the Good News people to come in. They did miracles with Brown County. We have to get this under control. We will offer incentives and workload reductions to officers, rebuild moral and get them the best training. If crime isn’t down by 20% in as many months, I will resign. 2022 is your YEAR to shine, Mr. Mayor. No one is going to mad at you for locking up gang bangers and coke dealers. This is what Government needs to be good at. Delivering safety and security. Let the community deliver the counseling and other social programs. That’s what they are good at. Just get out of their way. They will see the need and deliver much better than paid pencil pushers' expert in social smoke and mirrors.”
“I thought you said they were doing a good job.” you say defensively.
“They are. They are doing a good job serving a clientele none of the taxpayers ever intended them to service. They are doing a good job justifying themselves. However, your citizens are suffering, and you need to step up and stop all this progressive BS you sold us.”, says your Police Chief.

From here, I think you can figure it out. Yes, every department could use some bloat reduction. But it's NOT the way some big city Mayors are handing it. Defunding the police is NOT the answer. Look somewhere else. When your Chief walks into your office and says to you, “We can make do with less.” That’s when you can reduce your police budget.