Ilhan Omar Celebrates Minneapolis City Council’s $8 Million Police Defunding

The Minneapolis City Council continues to operate as if completely disconnected from reality.

This week, councilmembers Lisa Bender, Steve Fletcher, and Phillipe Cunningham dreamed up a new proposal that would strip the Minneapolis Police Department of $8 million in funding. Their plan is to funnel that money to other city services that will supposedly decrease the need for law enforcement. They are doing this, by the way, while the city of Minneapolis is in the midst of an unprecedented one-two punch: A blistering violent crime wave and an exodus of officers from the force.

In a tweet on Monday, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) appeared to give her thumbs-up to the proposal.

“Don’t fall for the fear-driven narratives,” she wrote. “We can craft a justice system that prioritizes people’s basic needs like mental health + violence prevention, & allow the city to put public safety first.”

Omar’s opinion was not matched by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who said the council’s proposal was both “irresponsible and untenable.”

“This notion that in order to have a more comprehensive public safety strategy you have to do away with one critical element, which is police, is wrong,” Frey said. “This is literally a life and death matter right now and we need to get it right.”

The Minneapolis City Council, of course, was the very first collection of elected Democrats to buy into the Black Lives Matter spiel about defunding the police. Before George Floyd’s body was cold, councilmembers were out there in front of protesters promising not only to defund the Minneapolis Police Department but to abolish it altogether.

Bender, who is one of the authors of this latest proposal, actually went on CNN to say that anyone concerned about who they might call in the event of a home invasion might want to consider that the question comes from a “place of privilege.”

As the months wore on, the city got a firsthand lesson in what happens when a community turns against their police. Early retirements abound, police officers are taking leave, and the ones on duty can be forgiven if they’ve decided not to patrol certain areas. The result? A crime wave of the likes the city hasn’t seen in years.

“According to police data, more than 500 people have been shot in Minneapolis this year – twice as many as 2019, while murders are up more than 50%,” reports Fox News. “So far this year, there have been nearly 5,000 violent crimes, the most in the past five years, the records show.”

In circumstances like these, any official who isn’t completely eaten up with idiocy would make “defunding the police” their very LAST priority.