According to a recent article, Congresswoman Cori Bush, a proponent of the “defund the police” movement, spent $500,000 of her campaign funds on price security.
In the third quarter of 2022 alone, Bush (D-Mo. ), a member of “the squad,” spent more over $100,000 on “security services,” according to Federal Election Commission documents seen by Fox News Digital.
Of that, $71,201.06 was given to Peace Security, a private security firm located in St. Louis. Cortney Merrits and Nathaniel Davis received the remaining $30,000 spent on security services, and they apparently reside at the same location as Bush’s campaign headquarters.
During the 2020–2022 election season, Bush spent more than $490,000 on private protection, according to the news source.
This is true even though Bush is one of a number of Democrats who publicly advocate for cutting funding to the police, a campaign that gained steam after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer and other Black people died at the hands of the law.
Bush’s security payments were originally exposed by Fox News Digital in July of last year. In a CBS News interview, Bush vehemently defended the expenditure.
They would rather that I perish? Bush enquired back then. You you rather that I perish? Do you want to see that? You want me to perish? You know, because it is a possible alternative. […] Because I have had attempts on my life and because I have a lot of work to accomplish, I will make sure I am secured.
So, if I end up paying $200,000, what if I spend an additional $10 on it? She said, “I get to be here to do the job, so suck it up, and defunding the cops needs to happen.” Because we’re attempting to save lives, we need to stop funding the police and instead invest that money in social safety nets.
She has previously clarified that the “defund the police” campaign is really a reallocation of funding from law enforcement to non-policing sources of community assistance and public safety.
The Missouri lawmaker, who was adopted by the progressive wing when she was inducted into the House in 2021, said earlier this month that people are becoming too fixated on the phrase “defund.”
According to Bush, the movement urging the defunding of the police is only a name for Americans appealing with the government to pay more attention to the issue of police brutality in the nation, particularly in communities of color.
The challenge with defunding the police is that we have to provide the whole picture. When people hear the phrase “defund the cops,” you can be sure they’ll respond with “reallocate,” “divest,” or “move.” She said, “But it’s still the same thing, so a change in verbiage won’t affect the movement.
Bush said, “We can’t get hung up on the words.
People devote more attention to the phrase “defund” than to caring about and solving the issue of police brutality in our nation, according to research.
This month, Bush argued that “there is no evidence that truly proves that saying ‘defund the cops’ lost actual votes” in an interview with CNN.
“If you could do it again, would you still double down or use that term, “defund the police,”?” CNN anchor Don Lemon questioned her. She gave her reply, “Absolutely.”
Both major parties have criticized the movement, and Bush is one of the few remaining Democrats to publicly endorse it.
It was blamed for helping Republicans ‘beat the living hell’ out of Democrats that year by then-President-elect Joe Biden in 2020.
Democrats and Republicans alike applauded him when he said, “We should all agree: The solution is to finance the police, not starve the police,” in his first State of the Union address.
Only 18% of respondents in a March 2021 USA Today/Ipsos Poll survey said they supported the effort to “defund the cops,” while 58% said they opposed it. Even among black Americans, just 28% supported cutting down on spending for the police.
A different survey conducted by NBC News in March 2022, a year later, found that 73% of Americans were less inclined to vote for a candidate if they backed the defund police campaign, while just 17% were more likely to do so.
A candidate who supports supporting the police and giving them the tools and training they need to defend our communities would be more likely to get the support of 75% of those polled.
Democratic MPs started to withdraw their support for the movement as polls revealed that a sizable majority of voters did not find it to be a winning topic.
In their blueprint for 2022, Republicans suggested allocating money to employ 200,000 additional police officers nationwide as well as provide incentives for hiring or keeping officers.
In the midst of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in St. Louis, Missouri, when demonstrators were calling for the defunding of police forces, Bush made the decision to run for public office.
The Democratic legislator added in her GMA interview, “I simply walked out on the streets during the protest as a nurse, as a clergyperson, as someone of the community who just wanted to see justice done, and I never had a desire to run for government, never had a desire.”