In truth, [Missouri Rep. Cori] Bush isn’t paying for personal security; her campaign donors are paying for her personal security. Her police protection accounted for more than a third of her campaign expenditures during the second quarter. So, the very individuals and organizations that were so excited by her calls to defund the police that they contributed to her campaign are actually funding police to protect Cori Bush.
The problem is her constituents don’t have rich supporters willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to protect them. They have the police. And the city of St. Louis, which Bush represents in Congress, recently cut $4 million from its police budget and eliminated 98 officer positions. Where is the money going? About $1.5 million will go for affordable housing, another million will go to assist the homeless population, and another million will be diverted to crime-victim support services — including funeral expenses for crime victims.
Maybe if St. Louis had a hundred more cops on the streets, there would be fewer funerals. Last year, the city had 262 homicides, the most per 100,000 people since 1970. Yet despite the explosion of murders in her city, Bush praised the decision to take almost 100 police officers off the streets of St. Louis as “historic.”
— Mark A. Thiessen in Democrats want police protection for themselves, not for the rest of us
