Vulnerable Democrat Kurt Schrader Says ‘No One’ is Trying to Defund the Police, Despite the Push from Inside His Own Party

“…An exclusive video obtained by Breitbart News shows vulnerable Democrat Rep. Kurt Schrader (OR) saying he does not believe there is still an effort to defund the police — not only in Portland but across the country — after the Democrats have made numerous attempts to do so.

In the video, a questioner asks Schrader about the movement to defund the police. The person said he’s “curious if [Schrader] will denounce efforts to defund the police. Crime is up, I think, almost 533 percent.” Schrader said he is “not for defunding the police at all.”

The questioner asked again if the congressman will “condemn the efforts then, to defund the police.” Then the congressman said, I don’t know if anyone is doing that.” Hearing this, the questioner shot back and asked, “No one?” It appears that Schrader said “no.”

Despite Schrader saying no one is looking to defund the police, last week in Portland, Oregon, the Police Association Executive Director Daryl Turner blew up Democrats for embracing the “Defund the Police movement” after all 50 members of the Portland Police Bureau’s Rapid Response Team resigned. In the statement released on Facebook, he said the resignation highlighted “that the priorities of our elected officials have failed.”

Axios also reported that “Democrats, in private and public, are warning that rising crime — and the old and new progressive calls to defund the police — represent the single biggest threat to their electoral chances in 2022.” In Portland alone, the homicides are up 533 percent, which means the city is on track to have more than 1,000 shootings by the end of this year.

Schrader’s Democrat colleagues in the House of Representatives have even gone as far as to say the police should be defunded, reimagined, or abolished…

…Schrader, who said “no one” is trying to defund the police, also voted in March to “defund the police.” Schrader voted to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, with the majority of House Democrats, on an almost party-line vote of 220-212. The Act was described by Republicans as a plan that would engage in “defunding the police.”

Furthermore, in a nonpartisan analysis, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said that the bill for which Schrader voted would cost more than 18,000 police departments around the country significant funds…”