By Becket Adams
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/author/becket-adams
The suckers who have spent the last few weeks arguing that “defund the police” does not literally mean “defund the police” should be feeling pretty annoyed right now with Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The way the freshman congresswoman tells it, “defund” means exactly what it sounds like.
On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council reached a tentative deal to cut $1 billion from the New York Police Department, “though nearly half will be through shifting school safety from the police to the Department of Education,” according to Gotham Gazette senior reporter Samar Khurshid.
Ocasio-Cortez, who represents New York’s 15th District, did not take the news well.
“Defunding police means defunding police,” she said in a statement. “It does not mean budget tricks or funny math. It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so that the exact same police remain in schools.”
It continues, “It does not mean counting overtime cuts as cuts, even as NYPD ignores every attempt by City Council to curb overtime spending and overspends on overtime anyways. It does not mean hiring more police officers while cutting more than $800M from NYC schools. If these reports are accurate, then these proposed ‘cuts’ to NYPD’s budget are a disingenuous illusion. This is not a victory. The fight to defund policing continues.”
This statement puts Ocasio-Cortez with Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who has called for the disbanding of the Minneapolis Police Department, and opposite Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who states specifically that he opposes the “defund” movement.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/aoc-defund-the-police-means-defund-the-police