Tag: defund police

Group ‘White Coats 4 Black Lives’ Aims to Dismantle Racism in Medicine and Dentistry, Issues ‘Racial Justice Report Card’

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woman with microphone speaking to a crowd

On Jan. 26, the group “White Coats 4 Black Lives,” an organization with a mission to “dismantle racism in medicine and fight for the health of Black people,” gave the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine & Dentistry its “Racial Justice Report Card.” 

The result was nine “F” grades based on campus activity and administration policies during the 2020-2021 academic year. 

Founded in 2014, White Coats 4 Black Lives has 75 chapters at universities across the nation and pushes the Black Lives Matter agenda within medical schools. 

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Commentary: Defund Police Movement to Blame for Record 30 Percent Surge in Murders Across America

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Police advocates say the Defund the Police movement is responsible for the nearly 30 percent increase in murders in 2020, the largest single-year jump since the FBI began recording crime statistics six decades ago.

The change in murder was widespread — a national phenomenon and not a regional one. Murder rose over 35 percent in cities with populations over 250,000 that reported full data.

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Gov. Walz, Angie Craig Oppose Minneapolis Effort to Defund Police

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Minneapolis City Council Pledges to Dismantle Police Department

Two prominent Democrats have come out against the ballot effort to defund the Minneapolis Police Department, saying police reform, not defunding, is needed.

Gov. Tim Walz revealed in an interview at the Minnesota State Fair last week that he thinks the ballot question does not provide enough detail and will leave residents “confused” on what they’re voting for or against, Fox 9 reported.

“It’s been distilled down to this: defund police or fund police? I know it’s more complex than that, but I think that poses problems,” Walz said.

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University of Minnesota Professor Opposes School Hiring Police ‘in the City of George Floyd Uprising’

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A professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities is pushing back against the school’s decision to hire more police officers.

Nate Mills, a professor of English, criticized the school in a tweet saying “In consistency with the city of Minneapolis, the University of Minnesota has decided, in the city of the George Floyd Uprising and continued racist police violence, that it too needs *more* police officers.”

In consistency with the city of Minneapolis, the University of Minnesota has decided, in the city of the George Floyd Uprising and continued racist police violence, that it too needs *more* police officers: pic.twitter.com/WANoIeaY5S— Nate Mills (@frozenagitation) July 23, 2021

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Commentary: Critical Race Enthusiasts Should Learn the Lesson of ‘Defund the Police’

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Crowd of people in the streets, protesting and Black Lives Matter movement

A year ago, “defund the police” activists were having quite a time. Outlets like CNN and Vox were publishing fawning profiles. Social media sensations like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar were leading the parade. Cities like Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Austin even approved partial defundings. It was a juggernaut.

Now? A tough-on-crime former cop just won the Democratic mayoral nomination in Bill de Blasio’s New York. Former President Barack Obama is warning fellow Democrats, “You lost a big audience the minute you say [‘defund the police’].” Sen. Bernie Sanders has rejected calls for “no more policing.” And White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, a few weeks ago, bizarrely claimed that it was not Democrats but Republicans who wanted to defund the police (because they opposed President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill).

What happened? Intoxicated by a few policy wins in deep blue cities, enthusiasm in the left-leaning Twitter echo chamber, and their viselike grip on the national media, “defund” activists overlooked one important detail: Their agenda was deeply unpopular with most Americans. A summer 2020 YouGov poll found that just 16 percent of adults wanted to cut police funding — much less “defund” the police. Indeed, 81 percent of black Americans wanted police to spend as much or more time in their communities. During a year when major American cities saw an unnerving increase in homicides, after years of declines, that reaction was not just understandable, it was wholly predictable.  

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Metro Nashville City Council Votes to Increase Police Spending by $10.5 Million in Finalized Budget; Activists Disrupt Meeting

Corinne Murdock
Activists Disrupt Meeting

Metro Nashville City Council voted to increase its spending on Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) by $10.5 million, per the finalized budget. Mayor John Cooper approved the budget on Wednesday. Some of this funding will go toward the new southeast precinct, totaling up a 5 percent increase. Overall, the budget sits at around $2.6 billion. 

Following passage of the budget during Tuesday’s meeting, the Nashville People’s Budget Coalition shouted down the council members during its 45 minute recess. As a result, the council was unable to continue its business on time.

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Law Enforcement Officers Fired for Inaction in Parkland Shooting Get Jobs Back, Vacation Pay

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Two of the police officers who lost their jobs over inaction during the deadliest school shooting in American history have gotten their jobs back, with back and vacation pay.

Arbitrators reinstated them and could do the same for a third officer as well. Federal Judge Keathan Frink affirmed the arbitrators’ decisions in a May 13 ruling, the Associated Press reports.

Broward County deputies Brian Miller and Joshua Stambaugh were among the police who responded to a February 14, 2018 mass school shooting report at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

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Michigan House GOP $80 Million Plan Pushes Stronger Police Support

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Speaker Jason Wentworth

Michigan House GOP unveiled a plan to spend roughly $80 million to support local police departments.

The plan aims to counter the “defund the police movement,” House Speaker Jason Wentworth, R-Clare, said in a Thursday morning press conference.

House Republicans say the plan supports law enforcement, strengthens the criminal justice system and expands community policing statewide.

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Minneapolis Council Member Behind Defund Effort Blames Mayor for Crime Wave

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Minneapolis City Council Pledges to Dismantle Police Department

A Minneapolis City Council member said his life was endangered when Mayor Jacob Frey criticized his “public commitment to defunding and abolishing” the police department.

Council Member Phillipe Cunningham has been engaged in a public spat with the mayor over the past several days and blamed him for the shocking uptick in crime across Minnesota’s largest city.

“Last night, 78 shots were fired in one incident in my ward. Within a 20 minute period there were five other incidents of shots fired throughout the ward last night, as well. I was informed by constituents that about two hours ago, an Amazon truck was hit with bullets near Loring School. This is just a few of the incidents that have taken place in the last 24 hours in just Ward 4,” Cunningham said in a Friday email to Frey.

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Politicians Who Want to Defund the Police Hire Bodyguards to Visit Minneapolis

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Back of Police officers uniform

Politicians who want to defund the police won’t step foot in Minneapolis without their own personal security details.

U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Maxine Waters are both progressives who vocally support measures to defund the police. However, both of them used private security or an actual police escort when visiting Minnesota, the center of the defund movement.

Omar spent $3,103 on security in her home state in the first financial quarter of 2021, which spans from the beginning of the year through March, per Federal Election Commission records. One of the companies she hired, Aegis Logistics, provides armed and unarmed bodyguards. The other, Lloyd Security Services, provides video surveillance and intrusion detection — a vital service in a city that has experienced about 6,000 cases of theft so far this year after huge cuts to the the law enforcement budget.

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Commentary: Chauvin Verdict Disappointed Democrats

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Tuesday afternoon the Democrats and the Left at large got exactly what they said they wanted from the trial of Derek Chauvin. The jury found him guilty of all three counts — second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter — with which he had been charged in the death of George Floyd. Yet prominent Democrats who commented on the verdict seemed slightly bewildered and disappointed. Their collective response was captured in this statement from Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison: “I would not call today’s verdict justice, because justice implies restoration.” This is an odd assertion coming from the man who orchestrated Chauvin’s prosecution and secured an unequivocal conviction.

It is particularly odd considering that the city of Minneapolis agreed in March to pay $27 million to settle a civil suit brought by George Floyd’s family pursuant to his death. Neither that settlement nor Chauvin’s conviction will restore George Floyd’s life, of course, but it is all one can reasonably expect from the legal system. That, unfortunately, is the rub. When Ellison deploys words like “justice” and “restoration,” he isn’t talking about what most Americans think of when they hear such terms. He is claiming they are meaningless in a structurally racist legal system that is itself the root cause of tragedies like George Floyd’s death. This is what renowned legal scholar Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) means by this obloquy:

I don’t want this moment to be framed as this system working. Because it’s not working. We saw a murder in front of all of our eyes, and yet we didn’t know if there would be a guilty verdict — it tells you everything. Verdicts are not substitutes for policy change…. and there are way too many people including my colleagues that think that’s the case…. This one case and this one verdict, we still have people getting killed by police every single day on average in the United States…. We’re willing to accept violence against some communities as a necessary cost for “safety.”

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Violent Crimes Spike in Cities That Defunded Law Enforcement; Burned-Out Police Leaving in Droves

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Group of police officers with cars stopped, one holding a gun

Crime is skyrocketing in cities where police departments have been defunded, crime statistics show.

Since career criminal George Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis, last summer, many liberal city councils have voted to “defund” their police departments, allocating or redirecting municipal funds away from their police bureaus to other government agencies that serve “the community.”

More than 20 major cities have slashed their police budgets in some form, though the circumstances vary, according to Fox News.

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Over 100 Portland Police Officers Have Quit Over the Last Year

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Group of police officers

After almost a year of nonstop violent riots by Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other far-left domestic terrorist organizations in the city of Portland, over 100 of the city’s police officers have quit the force out of protest of the city’s failure to adequately handle the violence, according to Fox News.

The report first came from the newspaper The Oregonian, which said that since July of 2020, approximately 115 officers have left the department to take lower-paying jobs just to get out of the dangerous environment. The paper described it as “one of the biggest waves of departures in recent memory.”

Out of 31 exit interviews from officers who left during this time period, the general consensus was that the officers quit because they felt that they were receiving “zero support” from the community and local leadership. One officer said that “the city council are raging idiots, in addition to being stupid,” and that “the mayor and council ignore actual facts on crime and policing in favor of radical leftist and anarchist fantasy.”

As a result of the spike in riots, which began last summer after the accidental overdose death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, Portland also saw its homicide rate surge to its highest point in 26 years, with 55 deaths over the course of 2020. Numerous efforts by Mayor Ted Wheeler (D-Ore.) to try to curb gun violence in the city, through special police forces and various multi-million dollar studies, have all failed thus far. Wheeler and other local leaders were widely criticized for refusing to crack down on the riots, with their inaction attributed to the fact that they shared many of the same political stances as the far-left rioters.

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Analysis: The Stated Goals of the Black Lives Matter Impact Report

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Crowd of Black Lives Matter protestors.

Political activists who call for defunding police and ending what they call systemic racism used the banner of Black Lives Matter to raise tens of millions of dollars and launch a political action committee, according to the main organization’s “2020 Impact Report.”

The 42-page report declares victories in the election of two Democrats to the U.S. Senate in Georgia’s runoffs as well as three Democrats to the U.S. House from Texas, New York, and Missouri.

The report credits the new PAC for coordinating get-out-the-vote efforts. The main Black Lives Matter organization also entered the legislative fray for the first time while making generous grants to allied organizations.

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‘Violence Interrupter’ Organization Gideon’s Army Glorifies Walter Wallace’s Death

Corinne Murdock

Following Walter Wallace Jr.’s death, Gideon’s Army posted a picture that read “WALTER WALLACE: REST IN POWER.” Wallace reportedly was shot while charging at police with a knife, due to a psychotic episode. Following Wallace’s death, riots broke out in Philadelphia and across the nation.
Gideon’s Army is an organization that seeks to eliminate modern police systems entirely and replace them with “violence interrupters” and “trauma officers.” According to their site, these officials would provide conflict resolution and counseling to reduce crime.

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Minneapolis Residents Sue the City and Mayor Jacob Frey Over Defunding Police

Corinne Murdock

Eight Minneapolis residents filed a lawsuit Monday against the City of Minneapolis and Mayor Jacob Frey for the negative repercussions of defunding the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). The plaintiffs allege that city officials’ words and actions concerning law enforcement caused a severe uptick in Metro’s crime rates.

The plaintiffs are represented by the Upper Midwest Law Center (UMWLC), who issued a press release the day after the suit was filed.

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Black Lives Matter Plan to Disrupt the Nuclear Family and ‘Dismantle Cisgender Privilege’ Gains Support in Corporate America

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The CEO of Brooks Brothers sent out a letter to customers last week expressing support of the objectives of the Black Lives Matter movement, which include a plan to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family,” and “dismantle cisgender privilege.”

Brooks Brothers, the oldest men’s clothier in the United States, is headquartered on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York City, and owned by the Italian billionaire Claudio Del Vecchio.

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