(Bloomberg) -- The top U.S. homeland security official said it's “absurd” to talk about defunding police departments as a remedy for racial injustice, arguing that such a move would deprive officers of necessary training and leadership.
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said cutting police budgets would merely harm the communities where they serve.
“It's an absurd assertion and I don't understand it,” Wolf said. “If you're concerned about the racial injustice, if you're concerned about needing to reform different police departments or law enforcement agencies, you want to make sure that you are giving them the right training.”
In the past two weeks, mass protests decrying the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police offiers, and other examples of racial injustice have rocked cities nationwide. Some protesters have called for cities and states to “defund the police.”
The rallying cry is ambiguous. Some protesters say some police funding should be redirected to social services in marginalized communities. Others want to disband local police forces altogether.
Reallocating Resources
On NBC News' “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza said more money should be spent to improve housing, education and other societal issues.
“When we talk about defunding the police, what we're saying is invest in the resources that our communities need,” Garza said. “Use our money and our resources in a fully different way.”
Garza said the U.S. is “using policing and law enforcement in a way that far exceeds its utility.”
The effort has gained some momentum. Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the city would look to cut $100 million to $150 million from its nearly $2 billion annual police budget to redirect to black communities.
Wolf in the Fox interview said that calls to defund police were a “political statement.” He said that slashing police budgets would harm law enforcement oversight and leadership.
“It does not protect communities at the end of the day,” Wolf said.
Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, said that “defund the police” wasn't a slogan he would embrace but he understood the “sentiment and the substance” behind it.
“We are over-policed as a society,” Booker, a former mayor of Newark, said on NBC. In turn, he said, police departments in many jurisdictions are being used to address “the fragility or vulnerability of our society,” which is “a more expensive way to deal with it.”
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