Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she tells people two words when they ask what a world that has defunded the police force looks like.
The New York Democrat held a virtual town hall last week with constituents and said when she’s asked, “What does a world where we defund the police look like?” she likes to respond with, “A suburb.”
Ocasio-Cortez has been an outspoken supporter of the movement to defund police departments, which has gained traction amid protests and riots sparked by the death of George Floyd in police custody on Memorial Day.
“Defunding police means defunding police,” the congresswoman said in a statement earlier this summer following Mayor Bill de Blasio’s announcement that the New York City Police Department’s budget would be cut $1 billion. “It does not mean budget tricks or funny math. It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so that the exact same police remain in schools.”
“It does not mean counting overtime cuts as cuts, even as NYPD ignores every attempt by City Council to curb overtime spending and overspends on overtime anyways,” she added. “It does not mean hiring more police officers while cutting more than $800M from NYC schools. If these reports are accurate, then these proposed ‘cuts’ to NYPD’s budget are a disingenuous illusion. This is not a victory. The fight to defund policing continues.”
Rep. AOC: “When people ask me ‘What does a world where we defund the police look like?’, I tell them it looks like a suburb.” pic.twitter.com/yibEt18S38
— The Hill (@thehill) July 12, 2020
She continued in the town hall that she does not have a police detail, as it “doesn’t make me feel safe.”
“I don’t have a police detail because I don’t want that outside of my apartment door every day. That doesn’t make me feel safe. That doesn’t make me feel secure,” the congresswoman said. “I don’t want to live my life that way. And so I don’t.”
She also addressed the uptick in crimes in the city, saying it could be because residents don’t have enough money to pay rent and are forced to shoplift.
“Do we think this has to do with the fact that there’s record unemployment in the United States right now? The fact that people are at a level of economic desperation that we have not seen since the Great Recession?” she said. “Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren’t paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent and so they go out and they need to feed their child and they don’t have money so … they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry.”
