By Sandy Fitzgerald(NEWSMAX)
Calls to defund police departments nationally are more than an undercurrent or a fringe opinion, but as the demands grow, “it’s hard to imagine a worse way to help the communities of color that you’re seeking to help,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw said Wednesday.
“Fundamentally, a neighborhood needs safety to thrive,” the Texas Republican said on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” “If anybody is going to invest, if anybody is going to have a thriving business, if anybody is going to get a good education, the community needs to be safe. There are no examples of a community becoming safer with less policing.”
Meanwhile, there are “smart ways” to reform police departments, said Crenshaw, and he believes bipartisan change is possible.
“Even the bill that was proposed by Democrats has problems but there are certainly elements in there that we can all agree upon and that we should agree upon and get going,” said Crenshaw.
Some Democrats are saying that rather than taking money away from police departments, they want to allocate some of the budgets and redirect money, but Crenshaw said that still means defunding departments.
“They like to hold up the example of Camden, New Jersey,” said Crenshaw. “They actually increased the number of police officers on the street. Now what they did is break up policing and that was costing the city too much, but then they used that money and hired more police.
He added that there is only one outcome when a city pulls back on police, and that’s an increase of crime, which will “hurt these communities of color the most.”
“That has been borne out in every single piece of data and evidence and over the last few years, where violent crime and crime, in general, has gone up across major cities, and that is a result of police having to pull back,” said Crenshaw. “It’s the exact opposite outcome that we want if we’re trying to help the people that we’re claiming to help.”
