Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minneapolis, one of the wokest and most awful of the members of the reprehensible “Squad”, that collection of leftist ideologues in the House of Representatives.
As such, she tends to support the wokest of woke agenda items, such as defunding or otherwise attacking the police.
Showing that support for such a radical measure, she threw her name behind a Minneapolis-area measure that would remove the police department from the city charter and replace it with an Orwellian-sounding “Department of Public Safety” that would have focused on “public health”.
Houston Public Media, describing the stakes of the vote and how both sides characterized the anti-police measure, reported that:
Nationally, the vote was seen as a test of the political movement to “defund” traditional policing as it ran up against concerns about rising violent crime.
The “defund” movement, which called for shrinking police budgets and shifting the money to other social purposes, gained ground in the summer of 2020. A few days after Floyd’s murder, most members of the Minneapolis city council appeared at a “defund” rally.
But as violent crime surged nationally — and in Minneapolis — some of those same local politicians backed away from the idea. In 2021, the “Yes” campaign, supported by national left-of-center groups such as the ACLU and MoveOn.org, also distanced itself from the “police defunding” label.
Campaign spokeswoman JaNaé Bates framed the amendment as an “expansion of public safety.” She said the elimination of the traditional department structure — and the requirement for a minimum number of police officers — would give the city more flexibility in how it responds to crime.
“You actually can staff the department the way that meets the needs of the people,” Bates told NPR in October. “We wanted to really be centered and focused on the safety of human beings.”
The “No” campaign — “All of Mpls,” funded partly by local business interests — framed the amendment as a leap in the dark.
“It does not present any sort of plan for what will come after,” says campaign manager Leili Fatehi. “There’s no specificity as to what services [the Department of Public Safety] would provide, what law enforcement would look like, what residents can expect.”
And, though that outlet doesn’t get into Omar’s support of the bill, the Star Tribune reported that she did in 2021, saying:
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar are backing a Minneapolis ballot measure to replace the city’s Police Department with a public safety agency, putting them at odds with other prominent Democrats who oppose the ballot question.
[…]In her opinion piece, Omar urged a system of public safety “actually rooted in people’s basic human needs.” She criticized the city’s current charter and called for an approach that has a focus on social and mental health workers who would “work alongside officers to give people the help they need and make our communities safer.”
Well, fortunately for the Minneapolis-area residents that don’t want to have their communities terrorized by thugs emboldened by Omar and her ilk taking a hammer to policing, the measure failed by a wide margin.
Now that the votes are in, it looks like 57 percent of voters voted against the amendment, voting to keep the police rather than switch to whatever “public health” is.
Still, Minneapolis is facing major crime problems: the city is seeking millions in funding to stop police from quitting as violent crime surges and the city struggles to recover from the damage wrought by the George Floyd riots.
But, with voters resoundingly rejecting Ilhan Omar’s favored anti-police measure, perhaps the city’s police and crime situation will get back on track and politicians will wake up to what voters want rather than what crazy leftists on Twitter want.
By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.
This story syndicated with permission from Gen Z Conservative