Miami police chief pushes back against MSNBC's interpretation of 'defund the police'

The differences in word choice took center stage in an MSNBC interview between host Stephanie Ruhle and Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo.

“The idea behind Defund the Police is not to take money away from the police force, but to redeploy money in better, smarter ways to keep law enforcement safe, to keep communities safe,” is how Ruhle framed things.

But Acevedo had a lot to respond to there. New York dropping charges for hundreds of looters being only part of the bigger picture of spiraling crime rates.

“Well, look, first of all ‘Defund the Police’ means different things to different people. For some folks, it means abolishing the police. For some other folks, it means to cut the police. But for folks that need us the most, which is unfortunately communities of color, it means less safety for them.”

Acevedo went on the show to talk about the state of policing and law enforcement in America, 2021. The “anti-police sentiment” as he describes means getting the police’s side of the story out there in the media in the first place.

Police Chief Acevedo referred to the succession plans of Buckhead, Atlanta as to why the defund police strategy wouldn’t work. He alludes to the fact that the people in that particular neighborhood have enough resources among themselves to fix the rampant crime problem.

Instead the defunding of law enforcement would be a detriment to poorer areas of states.

San Francisco’s situation is a counterexample to what MSNBC asserts the “defund the police” movement is. Mayor London Breed directly took $3.75 million from the police department budget and funneled it to black communities.

As to whether or not it worked, within this past week a viral video showed thieves robbing a San Francisco Walgreens in broad daylight.