After being accused of supporting the “Defund Police” initiative that has been spurred on by the Black Lives Matter movement, a defensive Vice President Joe Biden has emphatically said that he does “not support defunding police.”
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has also come out in defense of Biden and has disavowed defunding law enforcement, as the group's communications director Xochitl Hinojosa was been insistent that the DNC does “not support defunding police.”
“The campaign has been very clear when it comes to defunding the police,” Hinojosa said during the DNC convention. “They do not support defunding the police and I don’t know how many times we have to say this on this network or others, but that is the case.”
The Biden for President campaign and national Democrats seem to be on the same page with the defunding police narrative, but it seems as if state Democratic Parties, specifically the Florida Democratic Party, didn't receive the group memo about where they all should stand when it comes to defunding law enforcement.
The Florida Democratic Party has not made a definitive statement denouncing the call to defund police, but several of their key staffers might want to stick to Biden’s script and not go off the reservation by calling for the defunding of police and not make disparaging remarks against police.
Earlier this summer, Conservative news site Breitbart touched on three staffers expressing their disdain towards police, but in digging a little deeper, we were able to uncover more colorful tweets by the same group of staffers, Creative Director Ali Akın Kurnaz and Digital Organizer Alexzahn Odishelidze, and a girl named Ariel.
Kurnaz, the staffer with the most to say, even went as far as to slight Biden for speaking at the “funeral of a slain NY police” officer.
“Joe Biden speaks at funeral of slain NY police, no one speaks at funerals of slain black teenagers,” stated Kurnaz
Kurnaz believes that law enforcement is an “occupation force” and “perpetrators of violence” and “trigger-happy violent police.”
Odishelidze simply believes that all police do is “pull over people and kill black people,” while Ariel believes wholeheartedly in defunding police.
We reached out to the Florida Democratic Party for comment and get their official position (we can assume they are in line with the national party), but have not heard back from anyone.
Could these outbursts from Democratic Party employees signal that the state party or even Democrats across the country are at odds with each other over supporting the defund police movement?
