A freshman congressman who ran for office on defunding the police requested and received a special police detail to guard his home after the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot.
U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., requested a “directed patrol” at his home, said Yonkers Police Department Detective Lt. Dean Politopoulos.
But Politopoulos told the New York Post that police have not detected anything unusual in the area of his Yonkers, New York, home for the last several years.
Representatives for Bowman said the police protection was brought in after the congressman “received threats.”
Bowman’s chief of staff, Sarah Iddrissu, told the Post that the New York lawmakers office was advised by U.S. Capitol Police “to request heightened patrolling of his residence until the situation was mitigated.”
She declined to specify any threats, however, the Post said, and sidestepped the issue of whether Bowman’s actions were hypocritical.
But the president of the Yonkers Police Benevolent Association, Keith Olson, told the Post the congressman’s “cry for extra policing at his home is hypocrisy at its worst.”
“Not long ago, the Congressman called for dramatically less policing in the most violent, crime ridden neighborhoods,” he said.
“Asking these same police officers to protect your family while creating policies that make communities of color less safe is simply disgraceful,” said Olson.
Bowman, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is a Democratic Socialist whose victory came less than two months after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
In December, he said a law enforcement “system this cruel and inhumane can’t be reformed.”
“Defund the police, and defund the system that’s terrorizing our communities,” Bowman said.
In an April tweet he said, “We screamed defund the police so we could reallocate those resources toward something that focuses on true public health and public safety.”
Bowman even is at odds former President Obama, who said the defund-the- police slogan was doing more harm than good.
“The problem is America’s comfort with black death — not discomfort with slogans,” Bowman shot back.
In a May tweet, the congressman said: “Too many police in our country are more concerned with protecting white supremacy than serving the communities that pay their salaries.”
Bowman isn’t the only lawmaker who talks “defund the police” but makes special security arrangements for themselves.
The Daily Caller reported Ocasio-Cortez has spent thousands on private security, and Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Cori Bush, D-Mo., have used campaign cash for special protection.
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