Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed claims he “never” supported the “defund the police” movement, but is that true?
According to a CNN KFile report, El-Sayed’s insistence that he “never, never called for defunding” law enforcement doesn’t hold up to a review of his past comments. After telling CNN host Kasie Hunt that he had deleted some X posts that had been taken “out of context,” the outlet decided to take a look into some public statements he made in 2020.
“We do need to defund the police,” he reportedly said during a radio interview where he went on to explain “how the slogan could undermine criminal justice reform efforts.”
More from the article:
“We are in a moment where a lot of our public conversation gets chewed down into 280 characters or less,” El-Sayed said in June 2020 on Detroit Public Radio, arguing it was better to explain what needed to be done than hedging “behind a hashtag.”El-Sayed at the time was a public health advocate, podcast host and Detroit’s former public health director.
“I believe that we do need to defund the police in so far as defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets,” he added. “And in investing more in the means of educating and empowering, engaging communities with the means of being able to take on systemic poverty, that we’ve allowed systematic racism to allow to fester in too many communities.”
According to El-Sayed, this includes investing in things other than law enforcement.
“What if we were to invest in social services? What if we were to invest in public schools? What if we were to invest in public libraries? What would the world look like there? And I think that has to be the way we go. And that means both investing more in these services, and it also means investing less in police,” he said.
El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Roxie Richner says “his perspective has become more nuanced” since that time, pointing to his “public health experience working with local law enforcement in Wayne County, Michigan,” according to CNN.
“One simple word has never been enough to fully explain the reforms we need for a challenge as complex as our criminal legal system,” Richner added. “Just as he did in Wayne County in 2023, Abdul believes we need to improve law enforcement recruitment, retention, and retirement funding so that law enforcement officers come from the communities they serve. He also believes we must reject militarized policing, pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and opt for community violence intervention, behavioral health response, and improvements in public health to reduce violence and protect the lives of communities and law enforcement alike.”
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Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to write. Marlee also contributes to BizPac Review.
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