NEW YORK, NY – According to reports, far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), during a recent virtual town hall event, dismissed the concerns of many Americans over a huge increase in violent crime in many U.S. cities as merely being “hysteria” and again called for the defunding of police departments nationwide.
The town hall, which was held with Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) on Zoom, saw Ocasio-Cortez – nicknamed “AOC” and part of the so-called “Squad” of progressive Congresswomen – seemed to ignore the crime statistics and the fears of her constituents while discussing the issues that are overtaking many big cities recently.
“We are seeing these headlines about percentage increases,” AOC said. “Now, I want to say that any amount of harm is unacceptable and too much, but I also want to make sure that this hysteria, you know, that this doesn’t drive a hysteria and that we look at these numbers in context so that we can make responsible decisions about what to allocate in that context.”
During the meeting, AOC and Bowman both agreed that law enforcement agencies should have their budgets cut, despite the fact that the latest NYPD data shows shootings in New York City have jumped 53.2 percent and murders 13.3 percent from last year. In addition, crime overall in many cities across the nation, according to reports, have seen crime levels rise to their highest levels in over 20 years.
“I want us all to challenge ourselves by really entertaining solutions that we’ve seen do work,” AOC said. “It does challenges traditional ways of thinking of every time you see an increase in crime, it means we have to have an increase in our police budget. Not only is that relationship actually not that related, there are cities, and our city included, that have increased policing budgets to levels that we’ve never seen and that has still coincided at times with increases in crime.”
AOC also noted that there’s a lot of “hubbub and resistance, particularly from Republicans,” on the idea of defunding the police. In addition, AOC raised eyebrows earlier this month when she said that the “answer to violent crime is to stop building more jails.”
Meanwhile, while Bowman has also issued calls to defund law enforcement, he also asked the Yonkers Police Department to provide special protection for his home after he allegedly received death threats following the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol building.
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