Several Democratic lawmakers known for their bitter anti-police rhetoric aren’t practicing what’s in their speeches.
These backers of the, “Defund the police,” movement in public are paying big money for their own private police protection.
Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Cori Bush (Mo.) spent nearly $100,000 on private security for the third financial quarter, according to records reviewed by Fox News.
Since these are campaign expenses, the money comes from donor dollars – which means supporters who contribute to them for their, “Defund the police,” sloganeering are instead paying for private policing, the network noted.
The biggest expenditures were reported by Bush, who shelled out $65,000 on private security, according to the report.
Omar paid $22,000 to two different private security firms for the quarter.
Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign paid $10,000 to several private security firms, while Pressley paid a little under $4,000.
The four are the core of what’s known as “The Squad,” a group of progressive lawmakers with an extreme-left agenda on everything from taxes to education to climate change.
But one of their signature issues is policing — not just police reform, but specifically cutting the size, scope and budgets of police departments across the nation.
The movement gained steam last year after the former police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in an incident caught on video, which shocked the nation and caused mass protests.
Ultimately Chauvin was arrested and convicted on murder charges. He is now serving a 22-year prison sentence.
But some on the far left want more, and have turned, “Defund the police,” into their rallying cry.
Ocasio-Cortez explained last summer that it doesn’t mean simply shuffling the budget around or making minor cuts.
“Defunding police means defunding police,” she said at the time. “It does not mean budget tricks or funny math.”
But more centrist Democrats called the anti-police rhetoric a key reason as to why the party failed to ride on the coattails of President Joe Biden’s win last year. The Democrats lost seats in the House and were left clinging to a perilously slim majority.
Former President Barack Obama said the, “Defund the police,” slogan only hurts them.
“You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done,” he told the Snapchat political show “Good Luck America” weeks after the election.
“Squad” members were unmoved.
“We lose people in the hands of police,” Omar wrote on Twitter. “It’s not a slogan but a policy demand. And centering the demand for equitable investments and budgets for communities across the country gets us progress and safety.”
Bush was similarly defiant.
“It’s not a slogan,” she wrote at the time. “It’s a mandate for keeping our people alive. Defund the police.”
But while they support defunding the police out in communities, they’re taking a different approach to their own protection – and not just over the latest quarter. A Fox News analysis of their campaign finance records earlier in the year found a similar trend.
That report, in April, found Bush, Omar, Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez had spent “tens of thousands of dollars on different private security services.”
For the first three months of the year, Ocasio-Cortez spent more than $25,000 on security. That includes a $3,000-per-month contract with a New York-based “security consultant,” as well as a $1,500 expense on a security detail for traveling to Houston during a winter storm.
Since then, the calls to defund the police have only grown among the left – but so have the security fees paid by the loudest advocates of those measures.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.