Valerie Jarrett rebuked left-wing activists calling to strip funding from police departments in reaction to George Floyd’s death.
Jarrett, who served former President Barack Obama as his senior White House advisor, broke with the “Defund the Police” movement in an interview with Time on Tuesday. Jarrett pointed out that a functioning society depends on police officers enforcing laws.
“Democracy depends upon having law enforcement. The challenge here is that much of our law enforcement we know is not just,” Jarrett said. “I might argue you might need more money for law enforcement — in recruitment, and training, adding equipment, maybe body cameras, other types of resources that are available so that the public can see what’s going on.”
“The question is are we really using our law enforcement in a way that is fair and just, and that builds this bond of trust?” Jarrett continued. “And I think that’s a much more complicated question than simply should we cut their funding or not.”
Jarrett’s comments echo some made by self-proclaimed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). While Sanders explicitly did not call for providing more funds to police departments, he also did not say their budgets should be cut like local officials in some of the largest cities in the United States are suggesting.
“Do I think we should not have police departments in America? No, I don’t,” Sanders told The New Yorker in an interview published Tuesday. “There’s no city in the world that does not have police departments. What you need are — I didn’t call for more money for police departments. I called for police departments that have well-educated, well-trained, well-paid professionals.”
Officials in Los Angeles and New York City are pushing forward with legislation that would cut funding to local police forces. The Minneapolis city council has taken the movement a step further as Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender announced on Sunday that the council had a veto-proof majority in favor of disbanding the Minneapolis Police Department.
“Our commitment is to do what is necessary to keep every single member of our community safe and to tell the truth that the Minneapolis Police are not doing that,” Bender said on CNN. “Our commitment is to end our city’s toxic relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department, to end policing as we know it, and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe.”
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced last week that the city would cut roughly $100-$150 million from the police department’s budget and redirect that money to social programs targeting minority neighborhoods.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that his administration would follow a similar strategy, though some doubt that the mayor will follow through. De Blasio announced on Sunday that he was “committed” to redirecting some funds from the city’s police department to social programs.
“We’re committed to seeing a shift of funding to youth services, to social services, that will happen literally in the course of the next three weeks, but I’m not going to go into detail because it is subject to negotiation and we want to figure out what makes sense,” the mayor said without saying how deep the cuts would be.
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