Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has doled out hundreds of thousands on private security despite her ties to the Defund the Police movement, according to Fox News.
Abrams’ campaign paid $450,000 to an Atlanta-based security firm called Executive Protection Agencies between December 2021 and April 2022, Fox News reported Tuesday.
But Abrams also sits on the board of The Marguerite Casey Foundation — a nonprofit she joined in 2021 that has supported abolishing and defunding police.
“Defund the police,” said Carmen Rojas, president of CEO of The Marguerite Casey Foundation, in April 2021.
The Marguerite Casey Foundation directed thousands in grants in 2020 to left-wing organizations that have sought to defund law enforcement, the group’s 2020 tax documents show. This includes $150,000 to the Black Organizing Project, which helped lead an initiative in 2021 to dismantle the police department for the Oakland, California, school board.
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Abrams notably said in June 2020 that “we have to reallocate resources” when asked by CNN whether she supports defunding police.
“We have to reallocate resources, so yes,” she also said. “If there’s a moment where the resources are so tight that we have to choose between whether we murder black people or serve black people, then absolutely our choice must be service.”
Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who is running for reelection, released an ad in June criticizing Abrams for her past comments on defunding police. The ad also criticized Abrams’ ties to The Marguerite Casey Foundation.
However, Abrams told Axios two weeks ago that she “never supported defunding the police” and that Kemp is “cherry-picking information.” Abrams then told Fox News her “intent is to balance public safety and justice” and argued for police officers to get paid more money.
“Stacey Abrams wants to defund the police and open up the jails to let violent criminals roam free while you pay for her private security,” Stephen Lawson, a Georgia Republican strategist, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “If you could be arrested for hypocrisy, Stacey Abrams would be serving a life sentence.”
More than 100 Georgia sheriffs condemned Abrams in June for her “complete disdain for law enforcement” and “ties to an anti-police organization which openly advocates for abolishing prisons and stripping local police departments of their funding.”
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The Marguerite Casey Foundation granted $250,000 in 2020 to the Movement for Black Lives — a coalition of over 50 groups that believes “prisons, police and all other institutions that inflict violence on Black people must be abolished and replaced by institutions that value and affirm the flourishing of Black lives.” The foundation also unveiled a campaign in 2021 called “Answer the Uprising,” which pledged over $1.6 million to “fund programs and organizations that directly address racial injustice in policing and the justice system.”
“Tens of millions of everyday people took extraordinary risks to say what they wanted in the clearest terms possible — transform, defund, abolish,” Marguerite Casey Foundation says on its website. “They wanted an end to police violence and all forms of racist violence and injustice that are endemic within the criminal justice system.”
Abrams’ campaign did not respond to TheDCNF’s request for comment. Executive Protection Agencies, The Marguerite Casey Foundation, Black Organizing Project and Movement for Black Lives did not either.
“Stacey Abrams’ jaw-dropping hypocrisy knows no limits,” a spokesman for Kemp’s campaign told TheDCNF. “While she tries to run from her record of supporting — and profiting from — the Defund the Police movement, Governor Kemp will continue to stand with the men and women in law enforcement that keep our communities safe.”
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