City Council members in Minneapolis who recently voted to disband their city’s police department are getting $4,500 a day in private security after threats were received in their offices.
Council members Andrea Jenkins, Phillipe Cunningham, and Alondra Cano are outspoken proponents of efforts to defund the Minneapolis Police Department. All are now receiving protection from a private security contractor, paid for by the taxpayer.
Cunningham did respond to Fox 9’s request for comment, telling the outlet through a text message that, “I don’t feel comfortable publicly discussing the death threats against me or the level of security I currently have protecting me from those threats. The security detail is temporary, he noted.
Yes, irony’s a bit*h, ain’t it?
Jenkins said she has been asking for security since she became a council member.
“My concern is the large number of white nationalist(s) in our city and other threatening communications I’ve been receiving,” she wrote in an email to FOX 9.
White nationalists? A “large number”?
In Minneapolis? Sheesh.
Interestingly, the police don’t know what the heck the council members are talking about.
The police department does not have reports of threats against city council members, a representative for Minneapolis Police told Fox 9. Jenkins did not report threats she’s received through phone messages, emails and social media because she’s busy handling aftermath from the pandemic and Floyd’s death, she told Fox 9.
Their paranoid mistrust of the police must be so profound that they don’t report threats serious enough that they need armed guards to shepherd them around?
And Jenkins doesn’t have the time to pick up the phone and tell the cops her life is in danger? Really? Sheesh.
I don’t begrudge politicians being protected – as long as the threat is real. That’s why we have a police force – to investigate the threats and see if they’re serious. That Jenkins and the others never reported any threats is not only dumb on their part but calls into question just how real and serious any threats might be.
Do these politicians realize the heavy irony in calling to defund police while needing protection?
Other city officials across the country faced criticism for using private security while railing against their police departments. Democratic Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez, for instance, reportedly used police officers as security over the past two months while calling for the department to be defunded.
There is a disturbing aura of entitlement surrounding politicians of all ideological and political stripes. It’s turned the world upside down, where people we hire to serve us end up making us serve them.
It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. But as government gets larger, the arrogance of public servants becomes more pronounced. They don’t see themselves as “public servants” anymore. They see themselves as rulers and us as servants.
Not a very satisfactory state of affairs.
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