Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden does not support defunding police in America, despite calls to do so from some on the left in the wake of George Floyd’s death late last month.
“As his criminal justice proposal made clear months ago, Vice President Biden does not believe that police should be defunded,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement Monday.
“He hears and shares the deep grief and frustration of those calling out for change, and is driven to ensure that justice is done and that we put a stop to this terrible pain,” Bates added before listing Biden’s support for funding health and safety programs and community policing programs “so that officers can focus on the job of policing.”
In the statement, Bates also mentioned Biden’s support for “diversifying police departments so that they resemble the communities in which they serve.”
Biden’s opposition deals a blow to the growing movement to defund police departments in communities across America as a response to supposed systemic racism within law enforcement.
In Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, the city council recently signed a pledge to end the city’s police department. Last week, the council’s president, Lisa Bender, confirmed that the police department would be “dismantled” and replaced with a “transformative new model of public safety.”
According to Fox News, similar initiatives to transfer funding away from police have begun in New York City and Los Angeles, though the concept is still well outside the mainstream.
A recent YouGov survey found that only “16 percent of Democrats and 15 percent of Republicans support that idea.”