Cause and effect is more likely than a grand conspiracy. Reduction in police, reducing felonies to misdemeanors, eliminating bail have indeed taken root... and as was predictable, crimes have increased.
The experiment failed, and it's now time to clean up the mess and resume normal order.
Very few places actually did any defunding of the police. The SFPD's budget for 2021 is only about 1% lower. The evidence in TFA shows the public's subjective perceptions have no correlation with actual crime rates, and subjective crime rates also seem to have no correlation with police budgets. Also, TFA shows crime hasn't increased, it's the whole point of the article.
Is crime going up pretty uniformly across the US? (Violent crime seems to be, last year and this, but I've seen claims that it is only rising in the larger cities that had race riots last year.) Is crime anywhere near where it was in 2000, much less 1990?
The experiment failed, and it's now time to clean up the mess and resume normal order.