Al Sharpton Dismisses Defunding the Police: Only ‘Latte Liberals’ in the Hamptons Would Support That
Al Sharpton on Tuesday dismissed the idea of defunding the police as an idea “latte liberals may go for” and argued that people “living on the ground need proper policing.”
“I’ve said — and you and I have discussed this — we need to reimagine how we do policing,” Sharpton said during a panel discussion on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “But when you are talking about the fact that … we are in areas inundated with guns, that have this serious problem of people being given guns that can’t even get a summer program.
“To take all policing off is something, I think, latte liberals go for as they sit around the Hamptons discussing this as an academic problem,” Sharpton said. “But people living on the ground need proper policing. Yes, we need more resources in different areas like mental health. But we do not our grandmothers [being] prey to those that are the users of products of the big gun manufacturers in this country.”
Lawmakers in cities including Minneapolis and New York considered initiatives to “defund” police this year after widespread unrest arising as a result of George Floyd’s May 25 death in Minneapolis police custody. Those initiatives largely stalled, though New York’s city council said it would cut funding for the New York Police Department in the coming fiscal year.
“We’ve always heard about the tale of two cities,” Sharpton said. “On the side of the city that I come from, which is Blacker and poorer, we’ve seen more in terms of gun usage. I got a lot of attention when I did the eulogy for George Floyd’s funeral, but I also, a month later, preached a 1-year-old kid’s funeral in Brooklyn who was killed by a stray bullet.
“So we’re seeing both. Six people were shot over Labor Day weekend at a festivity in Brooklyn, so I would say statistically we’re not much higher than we were. But on the ground, it is certainly feeling more violent, feeling more unsafe in unsafe communities,” he added.
Watch above via MSNBC.
