Despite her ties to the Defund the Police movement, Democratic Georgia gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams has spent hundreds of thousands on private security, according to Fox News.
Between December 2021 and April 2022, the Abrams campaign paid $450,000 to a security firm in Atlanta called Executive Protection Agencies, according to Fox News. Abrams is also on the board of The Marguerite Casey Foundation, which has supported efforts to eliminate and defund law enforcement.
Carmen Rojas, president and CEO of The Marguerite Casey Foundation, said in April 2021, “Defund the police.”
The Marguerite Casey Foundation provided thousands in grants to left-wing organizations in 2020, according to its 2020 tax returns. This included $150,000 to the Black Organizing Project, which assisted the Oakland, California school board in launching a campaign in 2021 to disband the police department.
Abrams, when asked by CNN if she supports defunding police in June 2020, responded that “we have to reallocate resources.”
“We have to reallocate resources,” she acknowledged. “Yes, if the resources are so restricted that we must choose between murdering black people or serving them, then our choice must be service.”
Georgia’s incumbent Republican governor, Brian Kemp, released a commercial in June attacking Abrams over her previous statements on cutting police funding. The ad also mentioned Abrams’ connections to the Marguerite Casey Foundation.
Abrams said she never supported the police’s defunding, as revealed two weeks ago in an interview with Axios. Kemp, she argued, was “cherry-picking facts.” Abrams then told Fox News that her objective is to achieve a balance between public safety and justice.
“Stacey Abrams wants to cut police funding and release dangerous criminals from jail while you pay for her private security,” Stephen Lawson, a Georgia GOP strategist, said. “If you could be put in jail for hypocrisy, Stacey Abrams would be serving a life sentence.”
More than a hundred Georgia sheriffs slammed Abrams in June for her “total contempt for law enforcement” and “ties to an anti-police organization that openly advocates for eliminating prisons and defunding local police departments.”