This is real.
This is not from the satire website The Onion.
Lisa Bender, the MPLS Council President was trying to explain why Minneaspolis should defund the police.
CNN host Alisyn Camerota asked her what would happen if her home was broken into.
"What if in th emiddle of the night my home is broken into?" Camerota asked. "Who do I call?"
After all, if the police are defunded or dismantled, they will be unable to respond to emergencies.
Lisa Bender's response was extraordinarily alarming.
She said, "Yes, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors. And I know — and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege."
REALLY?!
It's a "privilege" to have your home broken into?
NO.
It's a privilege to live in the greatest country in the world.
It's a privilege to have a police force that keeps you and your community safe.
It's a privilege to be governed with a Constitution that protects your right to free speech.
It is NOT a privilege to have your home broken into without the ability to call for help.
If this is the best leadership that Minneapolis has to offer, then no wonder they're in deep trouble right now.
See her ridiculous comments below:
Bender appears to be a radical.
She does not want to reform the police.
Rather, she wants a police free future.
In the same CNN interview, Bender confirmed that was her goal.
Fox News reports:
Earlier in the interview, Camerota also pushed Bender on what exactly she and her council colleagues mean when they say they want to dismantle the police department.
"So what are you trying to do?" Camerota asked. "Are you hoping by dismantling the Minneapolis Police Department that you will be getting rid of the police department?"
"I think in Minneapolis, watching George Floyd's death, and the four -- the actions of the four police officers that were involved has been a huge wake-up call for so many in Minneapolis to see what many already knew, which is that our police department is not keeping every member of our community safe," Bender replied.
Camerota further asked Bender to confirm that she meant "dismantle" as something different than "reform" and was advocating for a "police-free future."
"Yeah," Bender replied, slamming the "militarized police force" and saying the city should invest "in things that we know work to keep people safe" rather than police.
Jeremiah Ellison, the son of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and also a member of the Minneapolis City Council, was more explicit in a tweet last week.
"We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together," he said in a tweet. "We are going to dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response. It’s really past due."
The calls to take apart the Minneapolis Police Department have been fueled by anger following Floyd's death. Police officer Derek Chauvin was seen on video using his knee to pin Floyd to the ground by his neck for nearly nine minutes, and has now been charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter. Three other officers who were present were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder.
Bender's statements have alarmed many citizens of Minneapolis.
Disbanding or defunding the police has strong support among the far left, but it is largely unpopular with the vast majority of the U.S. population.
Hopefully, it remains a fringe demand and does not become mainstream.
However, when asked what would replace the police, Bender was unable to provide clear specifics.
Furthermore, Bender and Mayor Frey do not see eye-to-eye on the issue.
According to the Daily Mail:
'We are not starting from scratch we have invested in community-based safety strategies…we’ve done an analysis of all the reasons people call 911 and have looked at ways we can shift the response away from police officers into a more appropriate response for mental health calls. So the groundwork is laid already in Minneapolis for us to work from that,' [Bender] said.
When asked if she feared dismantling the police system is giving Donald Trump a good talking point for the upcoming election, she said it's a system that needs to be addressed.
'It starts with telling the truth. I think we’ve been afraid of those political dynamics, of what would happen in our city to have our police force hearing those type of words and that fear is what we have to work through,' she said.
'Now the hard work begins for us to rebuild systems that really work to keep everyone in our community safe,' Bender said.
On Sunday nine members of the Minneapolis City Council announced they intend to defund and dismantle the city’s police department.
'We committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community a new model of public safety that actually keeps our community safe,' Bender said.
With nine votes the city council would have a veto-proof supermajority of the council’s 13 members to dismantle the police force, Bender said.
However, 38-year-old mayor Jacob Frey objected to dismantling the police department. He does not have the power to veto the move after a three-quarters majority of councilors back it.
Mayor Frey was booed by protesters Saturday when he refused to commit to defunding and abolishing the city's police force and forced out of the demonstration.
And Mayor Frey appeared on Good Morning America to say he would not support the plan to disband the department and that he wanted to know exactly what the council had in mind.
'Am I for entirely abolishing the police department? No, I'm not,' he said.
'I'm looking forward to working with council and talking with them and deciphering particularly what they mean when they say ending and abolishing,' he added..
He said he would rather see reform to police unions that would make it easier to fire racist cops and keep them out of the force.
'There are so many areas where mayors and police chiefs have been hamstrung because we have difficulty both terminating and disciplining officers and getting it to stick.
After COVID-19, it has been reported that people are moving away from major metropolitan areas such as New York in droves.
Will people soon be flocking AWAY from Minneapolis as a result of a defunded police department?
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