Ilhan Omar Has No Clue What America Without Police Would Look Like

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) didn’t hesitate to throw her support behind the “Defund the Police” movement, which came as no surprise to anyone who has watched her short career in Congress. Omar goes out of her way to make sure that no one can ever “out-left” her, no matter what the subject might be. This urge has led to accusations of anti-Semitism, calls for her to take a close look at her home country of Somalia before criticizing America, and general questions about her ideology and her intelligence.

But in this instance, Omar is in good company when it comes to her extremism: Like everyone else calling for a police-free America, she has absolutely no clue how this utopia would actually work in practice. We can only assume that, like that Minneapolis City Councilwoman, she considers such questions to be coming from a place of “privilege.”

Well, CNN’s Jake Tapper decided to wade into this privileged territory when he interviewed Omar on Sunday, asking her how communities would handle crime without the police to rely on.

“You have talked about the dismantling, the need to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” Tapper said. “What takes its place, and — if you could just decree what takes its place? Who investigates crimes? Who arrests criminals? What happens?”

“So, Minneapolis unanimously just voted on a resolution that will engage the community on a one-year process of what happens as we go through the process of dismantling the department and starting anew,” she said. “A new way forward can’t be put in place if we have a department that is having a crisis of credibility, if we have a department that’s led by a chief who’s suited for racism, if we have a department that hasn’t solved homicide. Half of the homicides in Minneapolis Police Department go unsolved.”

Right. So. Uh. Because the Minneapolis police aren’t doing a good enough job solving crimes, that’s a good reason for getting rid of police altogether? Taking away their money so they have to lower salaries and hire worse cops?

“No one is saying crimes will not be investigated,” Omar continued. “No one is saying that we are not going to have proper response when community members are in danger. What we are saying is, the current infrastructure that exists as policing in our city should not exist anymore. And we can’t go about creating a different process with the same infrastructure in place.”

It would have taken so much less oxygen to just say, “Yeah, Jake, I have no friggin idea. We’re just throwing stuff at the wall at this point so those (largely non-voting) protesters and rioters will love us.”

To be fair: Based on Omar’s history of corruption and fraud, we do kinda understand why she would like to see police abolished.