During a softball interview with Democratic Senator Cory Booker on Wednesday, 3rd Hour Today show co-host Craig Melvin gently pushed from the left when he touted the effort to defund police departments across the country, even wondering if law enforcement budgets in major cities were “too large.”
At the beginning of the exchange, Melvin worried that there was “confusion” over the far-left push to defund the police: “As you know, there’s been this call to defund the police all over America now, your bill does not address defunding the police, but there seems to be a fair amount of confusion over what that means. What does that mean to you, defunding the police?”
Booker initially dodged the question by touting the proposed police reform legislation put forward by congressional Democrats. However, he eventually waded into the controversial topic:
But to your question, I think we all need to be public safety advocates. And while many people might not be able to get beyond those words, those three words, the reality is we have a huge degree of commonality in this country where we know about 20% of the people we arrest are for drug addiction and abuse. And it’s better dealt with through treatment and counseling. We know that mental health is a serious problem that we treat with prisons and police, as opposed to health care. So if you start just focusing on public safety, police themselves will tell you that we are over-reliant on police and not doing the things that really strengthen our society, empower people who are at points of fragility and really make us a more beloved community that’s safer, and frankly, less on taxpayer dollars.
In a follow-up, Melvin pressed: “If you believe that, though, then do you also believe that resources that have been allocated for certain things should be redirected? Perhaps budgets in New Jersey and New York and other major metropolitan areas, specifically police budgets, are they too large? Should that money be redirected to social programs?”
Booker started to seem open to the idea:
Well, look, we as a society have defunded things. We’ve defunded public education in America in painful ways that have caused – have had a cost. If you think education’s expensive, try ignorance, which is far more expensive. We have defunded mental health care. And so, we as a society have to make explicit decisions about what investments are.
In an interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday, Melvin feared that Republicans had “seized upon” the defund police push to “paint” Democrats as “radical.”
On Tuesday, ABC’s Good Morning America co-host George Stephanopoulos urged Democratic Senator and potential vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris to back the defunding of police.
To his credit, on Wednesday, Melvin did provide some perspective of police across the country by referencing NYPD officers expressing outrage over the broad vilification of their profession:
Senator, really quickly, before I let you go, there was this news conference yesterday, I’m sure you saw it. New York law enforcement union heads really had some strong words for lawmakers like yourself, for journalists as well. A lot of law enforcement officers feel vilified right now in this country. What do you say to those officers who feel under attack?
The proper role of journalists should be to challenge politicians on radical ideas being advocated by the base of their political party, not to push those politicians to endorse such extreme positions.
Here is a full transcript of the June 10 interview:
9:05 AM ET
CRAIG MELVIN: The push to reform policing in America has made its way from the streets to the U.S. Capital now. On Monday, Senate Democrats unveiled a bill – a bill that would boost law enforcement accountability and also change police practices nationwide. Senator Cory Booker is one of the lawmakers who drafted that bill, he joins us now. Senator, good morning to you, sir. On Monday, you alongside Senator Kamala Harris from California, Congressional Black Caucus Democrats, you unveiled the Justice and Policing Act of 2020. As you know, there’s been this call to defund the police all over America now, your bill does not address defunding the police, but there seems to be a fair amount of confusion over what that means. What does that mean to you, defunding the police?
SEN. CORY BOOKER [D-NJ]: Well, first of all, I just want to say, the bill is the most sweeping police accountability bill, but a lot of folks, from folks in law enforcement to the civil rights community, just call it common sense that we should have transparency into our police activities, their misconduct as well as their use of force. That we should ban certain practices that seem to lead to death, like choke holds, which many cities have already done. So this is a powerful bill, it would not have been possible if it wasn’t for all the kind of non-violent protests you going around in the country, and I’m excited about it.
But to your question, I think we all need to be public safety advocates. And while many people might not be able to get beyond those words, those three words, the reality is we have a huge degree of commonality in this country where we know about 20% of the people we arrest are for drug addiction and abuse. And it’s better dealt with through treatment and counseling. We know that mental health is a serious problem that we treat with prisons and police, as opposed to health care. So if you start just focusing on public safety, police themselves will tell you that we are over-reliant on police and not doing the things that really strengthen our society, empower people who are at points of fragility and really make us a more beloved community that’s safer, and frankly, less on taxpayer dollars.
But we have become a nation of mass incarceration. 5% of the globe’s population, one out of every four incarcerated human beings on the planet, is in our nation. In fact, one out of every three women incarcerated on the planet Earth are here in America. Overwhelmingly nonviolent and people that need help in critical services.
MELVIN: Senator, it does sound like, though, you think along the lines of what we’ve heard from a lot of folks over the last few days, that we’re asking law enforcement to do things now that 20 years ago they were not doing. If you believe that, though, then do you also believe that resources that have been allocated for certain things should be redirected? Perhaps budgets in New Jersey and New York and other major metropolitan areas, specifically police budgets, are they too large? Should that money be redirected to social programs?
BOOKER: Well, look, we as a society have defunded things. We’ve defunded public education in America in painful ways that have caused – have had a cost,. If you think education’s expensive, try ignorance, which is far more expensive. We have defunded mental health care. And so, we as a society have to make explicit decisions about what investments are. And as a guy who has worked on the front lines of public safety, I remember sitting with the head of the FBI in New Jersey and him looking at me describing a lot of intelligence information about gang violence. And I looked at him and I said, how do we solve this? And he just shook his head and said, we don’t solve this problem. In other words, he was saying that police are treating the symptoms of deeper problems that we as society have failed to invest by making – address by making the right investments.
So there's a whole lot of common ground, this is not a partisan issue. Americans as a whole know that we are a caring and beloved society. Right now our policies don’t reflect those values. We need to start investing in each other, that really will create a greater public safety. And those people in the streets that are challenging us who’ve grown comfortable with a broken system, God bless them. Because from the labor to the suffrage movement to the civil rights movement, it has been nonviolent protesters really shaking the conscience of a country, making them face the broken jagged edges, and helping us heal and become better.
MELVIN: Senator, really quickly, before I let you go, there was this news conference yesterday, I’m sure you saw it. New York law enforcement union heads really had some strong words for lawmakers like yourself, for journalists as well. A lot of law enforcement officers feel vilified right now in this country. What do you say to those officers who feel under attack?
BOOKER: Well, look. I hope folks take time to look at the legislature that we put together on the federal level. This reflects our values, banning racial and religious profiling, banning these no-knock warrants that led to the death of Breonna Taylor. Anybody who’s sitting at home and has plain clothes people charging into your house with weapons drawn will take measures to defend themselves.
This is a nation that has common sense things that have been called for, frankly, decades ago, before I was born, in the Kerner Report. There are roots of injustice that we should address that police officers around this country understand are levels of accountability that they should be held to, because they have the power to kill. And to make them immune from prosecution when they do horribly wrong means that we are not a nation that is equal under the law.
MELVIN: Senator Booker, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, thank you for your time this morning, do appreciate you.
BOOKER: Thank you very much.
