Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed dodges question on whether he still supports defunding the police

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed avoided answering whether he still wants to "defund the police" and why he deleted past posts supporting those efforts.In November, El-Sayed was accused of deleting multiple social media posts supporting calls to "defund" the police in 2020 and 2021."Most major US cities spend WAY TOO MUCH on police departments to police poverty & WAY TOO LITTLE on public schools, health departments, recreation departments, & housing to eliminate poverty," El-Sayed wrote in one June 2020 post on X, then-Twitter, just several weeks after the death of George Floyd."Fixing that is what the #Defund movement is about."MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE DELETED THANKSGIVING TWEET CALLING FOR INDIGENOUS REPARATIONS: REPORTCNN reported that U.S.

Senate candidate from Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, deleted several social media posts before launching his campaign.(Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)El-Sayed was asked about these posts on CNN, who first reported the story, and what the reason was behind deleting them."Well, let me just speak to a vision for public safety that I think all of us can agree with," El-Sayed responded Monday.

"I think all of us want to be safe.We want to know that we can get home safely.

We don’t want to worry about being the victim of somebody’s violence, whether it’s from a neighbor or the state itself."He added, "And we got to get serious about the kind of policing we need.For too long, we have not invested in the kind of recruitment and retention and retirement that has people from local communities wanting to join in and be a part of keeping public safety.

But also, for too long, our answer to every problem has been someone with a gun."BERNIE SANDERS CAMPAIGNS WITH CONTROVERSIAL MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATEEl-Sayed went on to describe his support for "community violence intervention" and suggested we needed to "get past the past" and look to the future without explaining why he deleted the original posts.Abdul El-Say...