Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is stressing she is opposed to defunding the police.
“Yes, we have to do something on police reform, I know that. George Floyd died in my state,” Klobuchar said during a CNN appearance on Wednesday.
She added, “Ask Joe Biden. He’s been very clear about that. I’ve been very clear. I am not one bit in favor of defunding the police. I just want to see reform.”
Watch her remarks below:
The President and Vice President have “been able to combine economic focus with taking on a number of these social issues like voting reform,” says Sen. @amyklobuchar on the current administration’s accomplishments ahead of President Biden’s address to Congress tonight. pic.twitter.com/kELblYUALh
— CNN This Morning with Kasie Hunt (@CNNThisMorning) April 28, 2021
Biden previously confirmed he opposes defunding the police. In the wake of recent police shootings, some lawmakers have called for defunding the police.
When weighing in on the police shooting of Daunte Wright, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said 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 added, “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.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said on CNN in June of 2020 following the shooting of George Floyd, “What we are saying is the current infrastructure that exists as policing in our city should not exist anymore, and we can’t go about creating a different process with the same infrastructure in place.”
Another member of the “Squad,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), does not believe the system can be reformed.
“No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed,” Tlaib tweeted following Daunte Wright’s death.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) had a similar message, “From slave patrols to traffic stops. We can’t reform this.”
Klobuchar’s comments come a little over a week after a jury convicted former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of murder and manslaughter in George Floyd’s death, as IJR reported.