“Some just want to address what’s on the mind of the shooter,” Durbin said. He also told the committee the shooter was motivated “by his hatred of law enforcement.”ĭurbin said Congress should consider not just rhetoric, but also the availability of guns.

The shooter lay in wait and fired a shotgun at officers as they opened a door in the home.įormer Grundy County Deputy Zach Andersen, who was on the scene when Smith was killed, choked up Tuesday as he related the account to the committee. The shooter in that case led police in a chase before hiding in his house. The panel highlighted the April 2021 fatal shooting of Iowa State Patrol Sgt. “This radical concept of defunding the police has gone from the radical left - a minority of the party - to something that the primary fundraising entity from liberal progressives is now touting,” he said. Hashtagged #DefundThePolice, the event’s fundraising page said the distance was selected because the numerals 1-3-1-2 correspond to the letter A-C-A-B, which stands for “all cops are bastards.” Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, showed a webpage for ActBlue, a national Democratic fundraising group, that promoted a 13.12-mile run for justice. “One of the focuses has got to be … reforming some of the practices, but at the same time funding the police,” she said.īut Republican members of the panel still tied Democrats to the defund slogan. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who was the lead prosecutor in the state’s largest county before joining the Senate, said policing practices should be reformed, but not eliminated. House, congressional Democrats have rejected the defund-the-police label, and polls show the concept finds disapproval among most Americans. Pennie traced a rising anti-police attitude to the 2014 Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after a white police officer there killed Michael Brown, an unarmed Black man. “As calls to defund the police got louder, more police officers died,” he said Tuesday. Demetrick “Tre” Pennie, the president and executive officer of the National Fallen Officer Foundation, told the panel that “coordinated efforts” to “undermine our police” were responsible for a rise in police deaths.

The term has been interpreted across the political spectrum to mean everything from reforming police departments to abolishing them. Republicans on the panel and some witnesses focused on the movement to “defund the police” in the aftermath of the killing of Floyd, a Black man, by a white officer. We cannot ignore the dominant role of guns in assaults and killings of police officers.” “The record is clear: We are funding the police, and we should. “There are some on the other side who falsely accuse Democrats wanting to defund the police,” Durbin said in an opening statement. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said Congress should also focus on decreasing access to guns. President Joe Biden last week called for even more federal funding, Durbin said.ĭurbin, the No. “When you allow hatred of a group to spread, it makes it easy to justify violent attacks against law enforcement.”Ĭhairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, pointed out the committee had approved five bills this year to increase federal funding for local departments. “A main cause of this violence against police is the demonization and the disrespect shown to the profession of law enforcement throughout the country,” Grassley said. He said 73 police officers were intentionally killed last year, the most since 2001.

The panel’s ranking Republican, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, requested the hearing. Republicans on the panel raised complaints about general attitudes toward police and members of both parties criticized progressive activists’ calls to “defund the police,” which peaked after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May 2020. Senate Judiciary Committee and law enforcement witnesses at a Tuesday hearing blamed recent violence against officers on anti-police rhetoric, while Democrats distanced themselves from the “defund the police” slogan and said an oversupply of guns made law enforcement jobs more dangerous. Big rapids pioneer dream team.Republicans on the U.S.

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