Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) doubled down on defunding police this week, asserting the crime surge is just “hysteria” and that making “responsible decisions about what [funds] to allocate” away from police departments is “important.”
“We are seeing these headlines about percentage increases,” she explained about a recent New York Times headline about surging crime:
Now, I want to say that any amount of harm is unacceptable and too much. But I also want to make sure that this hysteria, you know, that this doesn’t drive a hysteria and that we look at these numbers in context so that we can make responsible decisions about what to allocate in that context.
Ocasio-Cortez continued to say the establishment media is perpetuating “this idea of crime” surging throughout America.
“I agree with Representative Bowman, that I do believe that we need to reallocate resources away and that a big, you know, major causes of this — and by the way, I also think it’s important context because we hear on the news and media, they perpetuate this idea of crime wave, crime wave, crime wave, right?” she continued. “And so this idea that a lot of us are panicked thinking that we are at some unprecedented level that we’ve never seen before.”
The Times printed a June 1 article in which Ocasio-Cortez referenced that “The F.B.I. does not release full statistics until September, but homicide rates in large cities were up more than 30 percent on average last year, and up another 24 percent for the beginning of this year.”
Establishment Democrats are attempting to portray themselves as supporters of law enforcement.
“We are the only party in Washington right now funding the police,” Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) told the Times, “even as we fight for important reforms and racial justice.”
Rep. Val Demings (D-FL), candidate for Senate against Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), has also accused Republicans of being the anti-police party.
“When it came to supporting resources for local communities, including law enforcement, not one Republican voted in favor of that funding,” she said. “When first responders needed them the most — one of those moments — they just didn’t deliver.”
The establishment Democrats’ attempts to change the narrative may be due to a May poll, which indicated 30 percent of Americans sometimes feel unsafe in public as crime rages in American cities.
Breitbart News reported June 23 that homicides have increased 58 percent in Democrat-run Atlanta, 533 percent in Democrat-run Portland, and 37 percent in Democrat-run Philadelphia. Shooting are up 54 percent in Democrat-run New York City, 51 percent in Democrat-run Los Angeles, and 18 percent in Democrat-run Chicago.