On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Stephanie Ruhle Reports,” Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo stated that defunding the police “will not impact affluent neighborhoods, affluent communities” but means “less safety” for the communities who need the police the most, which are disproportionately non-white.
Acevedo said, “I’m concerned about our criminal justice system, our courts that have been shut down across the country. We have activist judges across the country, we have DAs not charging people. And so, it’s like a perfect storm.”
He added that if the recent mass shootings in the country were perpetrated by “people that were Muslim foreign extremists, or even homegrown extremists and not just everyday crazy kids that are going around shooting this city and other cities, Congress would be tripping over itself to close the gun show loophole, to have a real universal background check, to do a myriad of things to help keep firearms in the hands of law-abiding Americans of sound mind and out of the hands of people that don’t belong having firearms.”
Acevedo further stated, “[F]or folks that need us the most, which is disproportionately communities of color, it means less safety for them. … This defund the police, this let’s not invest in good policing will not impact affluent neighborhoods, affluent communities. It will impact the communities that need us most. And I can tell you having worked in the most diverse city in the country, that if you go into high crime neighborhoods in Houston, Texas and you tell them you want to defund the police, they will scream you out of there.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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