Less than a week after Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser moved to make Black Lives Matter Plaza permanent in her city, she has sent a letter to the City Council to authorize as much overtime for police as needed amid a crime wave.
Bowser tweeted Monday, authorizing "any overtime necessary" and linking to her letter:
"I am directing the Metropolitan Police Department to use any overtime necessary to meet our public safety needs. #saferstrongerDC."
BLM has been leading the calls to defund the police, but Bowser is doing just the opposite as violence has raged in her city, including a drive-by shooting that forced the postponement of a Washington Nationals baseball game over the weekend.
"We have heard the calls from residents in our communities most impacted by gun violence: They want to see a strong, sustained police presence," read Bowser's Monday letter to Council Chairman Phil Mendelson and Council Member Charles Allen, chairperson of the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety.
"They do not feel safe while the threat of gun violence looms. My charge to our police officers is to keep our communities safe and bring to justice those responsible for terrorizing our neighborhoods, threatening our families, and harming our residents."
Bowser acknowledged that violent criminals have been emboldened in the past year, rebuking the "brazen shooters" who killed a 6-year-old girl over the weekend.
"Over the past year, the District of Columbia has been grappling with a sustained increase in gun violence," her letter began. "The terrible incidents of this past weekend, including the tragic murder of 6-year-old Nyiah Courtney, illustrates how far we still must go to address the brazen shooters in our neighborhoods."
Bowser's call for more police diverges a bit from her actions before the recent killing of the 6-year-old and the permanence of Black Lives Matter Plaza. Her budget called for "the city to spend less money on police," The Washington Post reported June 11.
Political pundit Josh Kraushaar pointed out the shift in her views on funding the police, tweeting:
"June 11: 'D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) wants the city to spend less money on police'
"July 19: Bowser: 'The better solution is to fully staff our police force.'"
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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