Some of the very same liberals leading the demands to “defund the police” were just caught in the middle of an alarming double-standard.
Reports out of Minneapolis found that three members of the city council there who voted to defund and abolish the police department have hired expensive private security guards to watch over them.
The cost to taxpayers: $4,500 … and that’s not all. That’s per day, according to the New York Post. The newspaper said the private security tab has topped more than $60,000 and still counting.
“My concern is the large number of white nationalist(s) in our city and other threatening communications I’ve been receiving,” Councilmember Andrea Jenkins told the local news stations Fox 9.
Simply put, they need police protection.
They just don’t want to admit it now that they’ve voted to defund the police …
But that’s not the only example of “defund” supporters seeking help.
One police officer came to work one day and couldn’t believe his assignment.
“So I come in this morning and we’re informed there’s going to be a protest to ‘defund the police,’” the unnamed officer said in a video going viral on social media. “Well that’s fine. I like protests, except for they requested a police presence … y’know … for their safety at the ‘defund the police’ event.”
The officer had a hard time keeping a straight face as he explained the assignment – ending his video with an exasperated sigh and a four-letter word.
https://twitter.com/EddieZipperer/status/1276979313838080000
Of course, many of the public figures throwing their weight behind the wildly unpopular movement – which has just a 16 percent approval rating, according to one recent survey – have police escorts of their own, especially members of Congress.
Even the people in Seattle’s autonomous anti-police zone called 911 to beg for help!
City leaders abandoned that multi-block district to protesters, who kicked out the police and essentially formed their own socialist picnic within Seattle.
Yet there’s been a surge in violence inside the protest zone – including multiple deadly shootings – and Seattle police say they’ve received numerous 911 calls as those in the police-free zone plead for help from the very police that were just kicked out.
Yet that hasn’t stopped the calls for “defund” the police, in part because many of those who support it don’t seem to know quite how extreme the movement is.
Even politicians can’t seem to find the same page when it comes to what defunding the police actually means.
Many supporters defend the phrase by insisting that it doesn’t mean to abolish police, only to take away some of its funding and redirect that money toward better social services.
But the movement’s leaders say that’s not the case at all — and they’re doubling down on stripping everything from the police.
“Yes, we mean literally abolish the police,” read a headline on a New York Times article by Mariame Kaba, who the newspaper described as “an organizer against criminalization.”
That editorial also calls for the closure of all prisons, too, saying a world without police and prisons is “a different vision of safety and justice.”
Retired Dallas police officer C’mone Wingo called that a bad idea.
“Not having police, defunding [and] dismantling a police department, and bringing in perhaps civilians to do the work,” she said on Fox News. “What are you going to do when the bad people come out? What are you going to do when the bad people show up? When you call 9-1-1 who is going to come out?”
Maybe the leaders of the defund movement – especially the ones calling the police and hiring expensive private security — should start ask themselves that question before it’s too late.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert, and is the author of “America’s Final Warning.”