Sen. Ted Cruz attacked social justice activists and Democratic politicians who have called for defunding police departments across the country, saying they are doing more to perpetuate racism in the United States than to rectify it.
“I’m a Texan, but I stand with the NYPD. And what they’re proposing, defunding and abolishing police departments, it is foolish, it is radical, [and] it is dangerous. But it is also racist,” Cruz said during a recent interview on the Rick Roberts Show.
“Many on the Left like to wrap themselves in the phrase and slogan, ‘Black Lives Matter,'” he continued. “Black lives absolutely matter, and if you defund the police, you are going to kill many, many more African American women, children, [and] innocent people that live in inner cities. … If you pull the cops out of them, more of them are going to be killed.”
Since the Memorial Day death of George Floyd and other instances of black people dying during interactions with police, calls for sweeping police reform have reverberated across the nation.
In several major cities across the country, local leaders have pledged to either scale back funding allocated to law enforcement or to abolish departments as they are currently structured. The Minneapolis City Council last month voted to replace the city’s force with a “transformative” public safety system. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio slashed funding for the NYPD by more than $1 billion.
“Our young people need to be reached. Not policed, reached,” de Blasio said.
Meanwhile, several of the country’s largest cities have seen spikes in violent crime since the summer began. NYPD leaders have attributed this trend to changes in the city’s cash bail programs and what they have described as a growing anti-police sentiment in the city.
“There is a feeling on the street that the police are handcuffed, that they are not out there as aggressively as we were in the past,” said Chief Terence Monahan of the NYPD.
President Trump has dismissed calls from activists to defund the police and attempted to tie presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to the idea.
“The radical politicians are waging war on innocent Americans,” Trump said last week. “If that’s what you want for a country, you probably have to vote for Sleepy Joe Biden because he doesn’t know what’s happening, but you are not going to have that with me.”
Trump released a new ad last month alleging that people “won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.” Biden has not endorsed fully defunding the police but has said he supports reallocating some law enforcement resources to various social programs.
Cruz warned that if Democrats who have called for sweeping police reform get their way, minorities will be the ones most hurt by such policies.
“More of them are going to be attacked. More of them are going to be sexually assaulted,” he said. “And what they’re doing is wrong, and it’s dangerous.”
