A socialist mayoral candidate who pulled off a surprising victory in the June Democrat primary, and is almost guaranteed to win the general election, is ramping up her hostile rhetoric towards the police.
India B. Walton, the socialist soon-to-be mayor of Buffalo, New York, has claimed that sending police officers on emergency calls “re-victimizes” people. Instead, she wants to send social workers on these often-dangerous calls.
Responding to an incident where a three year old child was shot while gathered with a large group in a courtyard area to watch fireworks, Walton reiterated that policy.
“It is my concern that that community has experienced a very deeply hurtful trauma, and our response was to re-victimize them with another traumatic event, rather than sending in social workers and mental health counselors,” the socialist mayoral candidate said.
Walton also noted that she plans to reallocate $7.5 million of police funds to social programs.
“It would go to a lot of the things that we talked about just now, into ensuring that people have access to mental health services, that communities have the resources that they need to thrive, things like wraparound services, educational assistance for our young people, job training, skills training,” she said.
“And also just organizing and frontline people who can go knock on someone’s door and have the door answered, to be able to offer some of the services that have been underutilized,” Walton added.
Unlike mainstream Democrats, who try to avoid the “socialist” label, Walton is proudly proclaiming herself as a socialist. She has repeatedly said that she plans to make the government of Buffalo far more progressive than it already is, and is an avid supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement.
According to her website, in her first 100 days she plans to declare Buffalo a sanctuary city, eliminate speed limit enforcing cameras in school zones, and end enforcement of low-level drug possession.
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