Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) does not believe the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright, a Black man, by a police officer was a “random, disconnected ‘accident.'”
Instead, Ocasio-Cortez believes “it was the repeated outcome of an indefensible system that grants impunity for state violence, rewards it [with] endlessly growing budgets at the cost of community investment, [and] targets those who question that order.”
She continued, “Cameras, chokehold bans, ‘retraining’ funds, and similar reform measures do not ultimately solve what is a systemic problem. That system will find a way — killings happen on camera, people are killed in other ways, retraining grows [money] while often substituting for deeper measures.”
Cameras, chokehold bans, “retraining” funds, and similar reform measures do not ultimately solve what is a systemic problem.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 13, 2021
That system will find a way – killings happen on camera, people are killed in other ways, retraining grows $ while often substituting for deeper measures.
Wright was killed on Sunday after Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, police officer Kim Potter accidentally fired her gun at him instead of using her Taser, as the police chief says.
Ocasio-Cortez’s fellow “squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has called for the end to policing, as IJR reported.
Calling policing “inherently and intentionally racist” on Twitter on Monday, Tlaib added, “No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed.”
Former President Barack Obama argued the nation needs to “reimagine policing,” as IJR also reported.
“The fact that this could happen even as the city of Minneapolis is going through the trial of Derek Chauvin and reliving the heart-wrenching murder of George Floyd indicates not just how important it is to conduct a full and transparent investigation, but also just how badly we need to reimagine policing and public safety in this country,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.
Vice President Kamala Harris warned during a roundtable event on Tuesday, “We know that folks will keep dying if we don’t fully address racial injustice and inequities in our country, from implicit bias to broken systems.”