Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) compared the federal government’s plan to use militarized police forces in Democratic-led cities to the “slave patrols” that operated in the antebellum South. Crockett made the remarks during an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi on Sunday.
Velshi began the discussion by asking how Americans—whether they support the federal government or not—should understand its effort to create a police force “that is not subject to the normal rules, that either policing or military should be subject to.” Velshi described it as “a police force that’s lacking accountability.”
“There is no accountability. And it’s going after its American people, right?” Crockett said in response. She called the idea that anyone in America wants to feel unsafe “absolutely absurd.”
“None of us want to be unsafe, but we’re not looking at the facts,” she said.
Crockett argued that public safety should be guided by evidence and data rather than fear-based policies. “So, listen, if we want to figure out how we are going to be safer, we probably need people that have actual intelligence and actually will pay attention to data and facts and go from there. But what they’re doing right now, it almost feels like, you know, I’ve seen the memes about the purge and all these things—but as somebody who understands history, when I see ICE, I see slave patrols.”
She noted that while she never lived through that period, “if you know the history of policing in this country, then you understand that they were born out of slave patrols.”
Crockett also criticized a recent Supreme Court decision that gives ICE agents greater authority to profile individuals based on race or language when deciding to detain someone. “It’s almost like you can just go grab them up—that is what they’re saying. And that is a problem. We all should have a problem with that,” she said.
“But when you don’t want to teach American history, that includes Black history, then you lose out on the benefit of understanding that we have been down this road before and it was not good, and we fixed it once, and it is a shame that we are relitigating this and we are going to have to fix it again.”
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