MSNBC host Al Sharpton declared Tuesday that defunding the police is an idea only a “latte liberal” could support.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the National Action Network founder said New York City’s poorer communities are in need of more policing, not less.
“We’ve always heard about the tale of two cities,” Mr. 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.”
“On the ground it is certainly feeling more violent, feeling more unsafe in unsafe communities,” he said.
Mr. Scarborough then brought up the “defund the police” movement, and whether recently cutting $1 billion from the New York Police Department’s police budget had disproportionately impacted people of color.
“We need to reimagine how we do policing,” Mr. Sharpton responded. “But to take all policing off is something that, I think, a latte liberal may go for as they sit around the Hamptons discussing this as some academic problem. But people living on the ground need proper policing.
“Yes, we need more resources in different areas like mental health, but we do not need our grandmothers [to be] prey to those that are being the users of products of the big gun manufacturers in this country,” he added.
Sharpton: Defunding the NYPD is “something a Latte Liberal may go for as they sit around the Hamptons discussing this as an academic problem. But people living on the ground need proper policing.” pic.twitter.com/TkXnVgUBEq
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 8, 2020
