The Democrats’ hypocrisy continues to be as blatant as it is predictable.
On Friday the Republican National Committee released a video of a Zoom conversation featuring New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
AOC was commenting on a New York Times piece that discussed surging homicide rates in major U.S. cities. As the Times noted, murder rates “in large cities were up more than 30 percent on average last year, and up another 24 percent for the beginning of this year.”
AOC, in the Zoom call chronicled by the RNC, suggested that the Times was feeding some “hysteria” about crime rates that was unwarranted. She also expressed concern about how such news might affect Democrats’ “responsible decisions” about “what to allocate in that context.”
Allocate, or reallocate, seems to have emerged as the new euphemism for defund the police.
AOC continued, “I agree with Representative Bowman, that I do believe that we need to reallocate resources away and that a big, you know, major causes of this — and by the way, I also think it’s important context because we hear on the news and media, they perpetuate this idea of a crime wave, crime wave, crime wave, right? And so this idea that a lot of us are panicked thinking that we are at some unprecedented level that we’ve never seen before.”
The hypocrisy at work here, is who joined AOC for this event, fellow New York Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman.
In another part of the session aired by the RNC, Bowman tells AOC, “I haven’t thought about the amount, but, yes, I support the reallocation of resources from NYPD toward more social services.”
That’s nothing new. Bowman has openly advocated for defunding the police.
For instance, in a tweet last December, after the Justice Department announced it would not pursue charges against Cleveland cops involved in the 2014 shooting of a black 12-year-old who brandished a pellet gun, Bowman wrote that he was for defunding the police and defunding the “cruel and inhumane” system that is “terrorizing our communities.”
Bowman has routinely called the police, as he did just last month, tools of “white supremacy.”
But as the New York Post reported over the weekend, Bowman also supported the reallocation of NYPD resources away from the streets of New York City – and directly to his home.
An NYPD detective told the Post that after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Bowman asked for special, beefed-up police presence at his house in Yonkers.
And NYPD complied.
A special detail patrolled around Bowman’s home for two weeks. The detective noted police “have not detected anything unusual in Bowman’s area for the last several years.”
Bowman’s office told the Post the request was made after he received “threats,” the details of which were not shared.
The Post, with its typical flair, summed up the issue in its lead paragraph on Bowman: “Defund for thee, but not for me.”
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