Pennsylvania U.S. House candidate Alfe Goodwin told The Pennsylvania Daily Star on Tuesday the past support of the Defund the Police movement by Vice President Kamala Harris, Governor Tim Walz, and her opponent Representative Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA-05) contributed to the police shortage in Philadelphia and its surrounding communities.
Goodwin told The Star her 14 years of experience with the Philadelphia Police Department gave her a “unique perspective” when Scanlon and other Democrats in 2020 expressed support for defunding the police, who she called “the first ones to see the results of policy” due to their presence in local communities.
Harris donated to a group in favor of defunding the police in 2020, when she also praised the movement as an opportunity to determine whether modern policing “reflects the right priorities,” and urged supporters to donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which bailed those accused of rioting in Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd.
Her vice presidential nominee, Walz, waited days to call the Minnesota National Guard as riots gripped the city, and Harris advertised the bail fund.
Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Scanlon marched with Defund the Police activists behind a bloody American flag in a July 4, 2020, public demonstration she defended as recently as October 2022.
Not long ago @repmgs / @marygayscanlon was marching to #defundthepolice because it was politically expedient. Now she says she supports #police. I’ll support our police, community policing, & technology to help solve crime & aid #lawenforcement no matter what the polls say. https://t.co/7DaURs70wp pic.twitter.com/3zDi6vkKHb
— Dave Galluch (@DaveGalluchPA) September 22, 2022
“I think that it was something that really wasn’t well thought,” said Goodwin of the Defund the Police movement. “It was something that happened on impulse. It was somewhat of a power grab.”
She summarized the thought process of Democrats, including Scanlon, Harris, and Walz, “Can we defund the police? Yes. Okay, so let’s do it.”
While politicians may have struggled to translate the slogan into tangible results, Goodwin told The Star the lack of support for law enforcement is drawing officers to conservative states, with Florida being the greatest beneficiary of the exodus.
“Let’s say if you had 15 years on a job in Philly, you can retire,” said Goodwin, who explained that a police officer’s retirement “will go a lot longer in Florida than it will in Philadelphia.”
If a Philadelphia police officer takes another job in law enforcement, Goodwin explained, “you have yourself another retirement. You have yourself a new job.”
Republican officials have celebrated as police officers from New York and Pennsylvania relocate to their state, with Governor Ron DeSantis stating that Florida gives law enforcement “the tools to succeed professionally and personally.”
While some of the incentives to relocate were in place before the Defund the Police movement, Goodwin suggested Democrats’ endorsement led to a deteriorating relationship between police and the communities they serve, with Philadelphia-area officers further stressed due to the lower head-count on the police force.
“It was more of the removal was taken into consideration and not the replacement,” said Goodwin. “If you’re going to remove law enforcement, okay, fine. But what are you going to replace them with?”
Ultimately, Goodwin said the voters of Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District “want to feel safe in their city.”
She told The Star, “When they do not feel safe, and when they are assaulted, they want justice. They want to know that they have other people in Philadelphia that will put their boots on and put their bulletproof vest on to put their blue shirt on and go find the person who committed this atrocity and bring that person to justice.”
Goodwin added, “They want to feel safe. They want to, be able to go outside of their house or sit on the steps.”
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Defund the Police” by Stephen Melkisethian. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
