Leer en Español
“THE FIRST thing Val Demings did when she got to Congress was abandoning her brothers and sisters in law enforcement,” is the harsh message from Hispanic-born officer Al Palacio of the Fraternal Order of Police in a video posted by Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign on YouTube.
The recently released video is barely a minute long. Still, it includes four strong testimonials from Hispanic police officers against Democratic Rep. Val Demings, who is running for a Senate seat against Marco Rubio in one of the most important races to define the majority in the upper house.
Ernesto Garcia, introduced as an officer in the video, said the Democrat representative turned her back on her former colleagues when her party began pushing the controversial proposal to defund police departments. “Even though she’s a person who was a former police officer, a police chief when the time came, and they started the Defund the Police issue in Washington, she was one of the ones who leaped.”
Crime in the United States has been increasing since then in the big cities, coinciding, in some cases, with the reduction of police department budgets and the shortage of personnel.
Rep. Val Demings, D-Florida, speaks during the House Judiciary Subcommittee, Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, July 29, 2020. (EFE)
“She got with the leftists […] on the agenda that they have, and she started attacking the police, law and order,” said Rep. Demings Officer Felix del Rosario, also of the Fraternal Order of Police, referring to the Defund the Police movement that was pushed and supported by most Democrats during the riots in the summer of 2020.
Another official, Anthony Boza, argued that Demings simply turned her back on officials because it was the most popular issue among the Democratic base: “Well, she turned her back on us when it suited her because that’s what was the popular hot topic of the moment.”
On the campaign trail, Demings has tried to portray herself as a moderate candidate who can capture the swing vote in Florida, touting her 27-year law enforcement career and saying she supports law and order.
However, the Rubio campaign claims that the Democratic representative is far from a moderate candidate, voting 94% of the time with the radical Congressional group The Squad and hosting campaign events with progressive politicians who support the Defund the Police movement.
As the year progresses and the midterm elections approach, the campaigns are stepping up their moves to embarrass their opponents. So far, polls show Senator Rubio with a five-point lead over his Democratic opponent.
Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón is a journalist at El American specializing in the areas of American politics and media analysis // Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón es periodista de El American especializado en las áreas de política americana y análisis de medios de comunicación.
Contacto: [email protected]