A Dallas police sergeant and former candidate for U.S. Congress is speaking out against Democrats who are falsely claiming that Republicans want to defund the police.
Tre Pennie, the executive director of the National Fallen Officer Foundation and a 17-year veteran with the Dallas Police Department, called claims made by Biden administration officials that Republicans supported defunding the police “ludicrous.”
“We in law enforcement, we saw across the country as the George Floyd riots progressed through this nation that the Democrats called for defunding our police,” Pennie said during an interview on Fox News. “It’s not like it was something that was just hidden from plain sight.”
“You had liberal cities across this country that actually put forward measures to defund their police agencies. Our officers suffered,” he added.
In recent remarks, both White House press secretary Jen Psaki and senior Biden adviser Cedric Richmond have argued that Republican opposition to Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package was the same thing as cutting police funds because the bill contained $350 billion in emergency funding for state and local governments. Earlier this week the Washington Post’s fact-checker gave the White House “Three Pinocchios” for the false claim, stating the obvious that opposition to extra funds is not the same as supporting cuts in police budgets.
Far-left activists invented the “Defund the Police” slogan as a means of advocating for radical reform of police departments, claiming that police forces in the U.S. are structurally racist. These activists want police department budgets cut so that money can be redistributed elsewhere to fund social programs they claim will reduce crime without police intervention.
But Democrat-run cities that followed the far left’s lead and defunded their police forces have come to regret the policy as crime rates have sharply increased.
“We’re talking about a 35% increase in violent crime nationally. Our officers, we understand, we’re completely on the front lines dealing with this nonsense,” Pennie told Fox News. “There are not legitimate programs or ideas being put forward in these inner-city communities.
“Let’s tell all the politicians out there we don’t need more tax rebate programs, we don’t need other government programs to support the inner-city,” he continued. “Look, we need to change the culture in the inner city. We have to deal with the way young people think. I’ve spent a significant amount of time in the black community talking to our young people and trying to inspire them to do something different with their life.
“We can’t get out here and allow these so-called activists to come in and promulgate ideas of critical race theory and make everyone believe that they’re victims and oppressed by the government. That’s what’s causing these people to come out here and attack our police.”
*story by The Blaze
