Wisconsin Senate candidate Mandela Barnes has called for defunding “over-bloated” police departments but has reportedly averaged 13.5 hours of private security per day.
While Barnes has served as Lt. Gov. of Wisconsin, he has “averaged more than 13½ hours of security protection a day — including weekdays, weekends and holidays — at a daily cost to the state of $660 for patrol officers’ wages. That’s more than 10 times the number of hours as his predecessor,” Daniel Bice from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Meanwhile, Barnes has advocated for defunding “over-bloated” police departments, an unearthed video from the Republican National Committee’s research team shows.
When asked if police budgets should be completely done away with or defunded, Barnes said in 2020 the budgets should not be completely done away with but “we need to investment more into neighborhood services” that should be funded by defunding police departments.
Crime in Wisconsin is on the rise, according to a MacIver Institute report. Murders increased 62 percent, and violent crime rose 8.85 percent between 2019 and 2020. The Wisconsin Department of Justice reported that in 2021, there were 57,000 offenses of theft, over 29,000 offenses of assault, over 18,000 offenses of motor vehicle theft, over 13,000 offenses of aggravated assault, over 10,000 offenses of burglary, over 2,300 offenses of rape, and 70 offenses of human trafficking.
Barnes is campaigning against Republican Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has been working to unveil the Biden family business scheme. Barnes is mounting his campaign challenge to Johnson in the state of Wisconsin that fell to President Joe Biden in 2020 by less than one point. Polling indicates Barnes has a slight 2 point lead over Johnson, a gap that has been closing in recent weeks.
Barnes is one of the most radical candidates in the 2022 midterm cycle. Barnes has objected to felons losing the right to vote and has supported the Green New Deal. He has also pushed for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), permitting driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, and giving in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants. He favors an entirely government-run healthcare system, canceling the Senate filibuster, and packing the Supreme Court.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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