Attorney General William Barr condemned the movement to defund police departments across the country, arguing that inner-city communities will be devastated.
“These communities are not going to have the safety,” Barr told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview Thursday evening. “Now, a lot of the liberals will buy themselves out of that. They’ll go to resort towns and so forth, and they’ll escape the consequences of it. But the people in the inner cities won’t. Their lives will be destroyed. Their opportunity will be — they won’t have the opportunity they otherwise would have. Their schools will be overrun by gangs. That’s not caring about black lives.”
The attorney general also mentioned the recent resignation of Seattle’s police chief, Carmen Best, who stepped down after the city moved to slash funding to her department.
“Well, lives are being lost in violent crime and the demonization of the police,” Barr said. “Carmen Best is an example of the highly competent and professional and dedicated police professionals we have in this country.”
Barr called Best “great” and praised the work of police across the country. He said the profession is “the hardest job in the United States.”
He said, “We’re asking people to go into very dangerous situations, to have jobs that are terribly wearing on them as individuals and on their families, to go into potentially deadly situations not knowing what will happen, and we have to continue to attract the best people into these jobs, and unless we support the police, we’re not going to have a police force.”
Barr has been critical of the cities across the country, including Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York City, that have attempted to defund or disband police departments, part of a movement spurred by George Floyd’s Memorial Day death in Minneapolis police custody.
Earlier this month, Barr instructed his motorcade to make a U-turn when he saw a pro-police rally on the side of the road in Virginia and joined the gathering to show his support.
“I’ve said repeatedly that, to my mind, there is no more noble profession in our country than serving as a law enforcement officer,” Barr said during a White House roundtable discussion last month. “ The police put their lives and well-being on the line every day for us, and their jobs have never been more difficult than it is today.”
*story by The Washington Examiner