A retired police officer attending President Trump’s Thursday rally in Jacksonville, Florida, warned that the left’s vision to reimagine police is a “very dangerous thing.”
Margie Grossman, who served in the police department for 32 years in Miami-Dade County, said she appreciates that President Trump loves law enforcement and the military and emphasized that she is “very much against” the defund police movement.
When cities, such as Seattle, allowed radical protesters to take over the police precinct — as was seen in the form of the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), it effectively, she said, “emboldened” people who “just want to do bad things.”
“They just want to destroy our country. I’m very concerned, and I think we need to get a handle on it sooner than later. I believe in everyone’s rights. I believe in respecting others, but we cannot allow this lawlessness,” she said.
When asked about Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-CA) recent remarks — that it is both “outdated” and “wrong-headed” to believe adding more officers to the streets is one of the only ways to make communities safer — Grossman said Harris’s vision to reimagine the police department is even more concerning.
Harris, she said, has “gone a lot farther left” from her days of incarcerating people for low-level crimes.
“I think this reimagining the police is a very dangerous thing. When you send civilians into what you think is routine, it’s not routine. Things change very, very quickly,” she said.
“Just like they refer to traffic stops as routine traffic stops. There’s no such thing. The number one cause of police officer death is a traffic stop. You need policemen out there, you need more policemen out there,” she stressed.
“What needs to happen is we have to do a little bit better training. I think a lot better vetting but not getting — not diminishing the police departments. I think, if anything, they need to increase police departments, and we just have to get it together here and stop with this lawlessness,” she added.