Representative Bush wants to defund the police but fund her husband.

Representative Cori Bush is a Democrat Party member and ‘serves’ the First Congressional District of Missouri. She represents a district that includes most of the city of St. Louis. St. Louis ranks as the worst city for violent crime in the US.¹ St. Louis violent crime eclipses Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore…the list goes on and on.

Of course, Ms. Bush has an answer for the crime in her district. Her plan has two main points of emphasis:

• Defund the police.²
• Empower the Department of Health and Human Services to handle public safety.³

Instead of calling the police when a constituent of Ms. Bush is threatened with violent crime, under her plan, one would call a social worker.

Representative Bush’s rationale for such a major overhaul of crime fighting policy rests upon her contention that “More than 1 in 5 people killed by police have mental illnesses and more than a quarter of all people killed by police in the U.S. since 2015 have had a known mental illness…” Ms. Bush gets these figures from a highly questionable Washington Post database.⁴ If you want to see how accurate this Washington Post Database has been in the past, check out the University of Illinois Chicago study showing historically, the Washington Post database almost doubles the number of people killed by the police than the numbers according to the US Centers for Disease Control.⁵

Consider Ms. Bush’s efforts at social reconstruction in light of the recent revelations about her concerns for her own safety. According to CBS as of January 30, the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation of Representative Bush for misusing public funding to pay her husband for personal security services.⁶ According to news reports, Bush has spent over $700,000 for personal security services since she first ran for office in 2019.⁷ Considering her own views of how personal security should be managed, we here at I Vote My Vote have two questions.

1. Shouldn’t Representative Bush be hiring social workers rather than her husband and security officers?
2. Has Ms. Bush made certain that her personal security force is unarmed so that the deranged people who might attack her would not be harmed or even killed?

Well, we here at I Vote My Vote will not hold our breath to hear Representative Bush answer these sorts of questions. But, on a slightly different note… Do you think the violent crime statistics for her district would improve with squads of social workers roaming the streets of St. Louis?

1. Most Violent Cities in America 2024. (2024). World Population Review. Retrieved from https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/most-violent-cities-in-america
2. McCammond, A. (2022). Rep. Cori Bush isn’t backing down on “defund the police” slogan. Axios. Retrieved from https://www.axios.com/2022/02/09/cori-bush-defund-police-2022-midterms
3. ICYMI: Rep. Cori Bush wants to transform policing and public safety with new bill. (2021). Cori Bush Congresswoman for Missouri’s 1st. Retrieved from https://bush.house.gov/media/press-releases/icymi-rep-cori-bush-wants-to-transform-policing-and-public-safety-with-new-bill
4. Civilian Deaths in Police Shootings and Interventions. (2024). University of Illinois at Chicago Public Health Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project. Retrieved from https://policeepi.uic.edu/civilian-deaths-in-police-shootings-and-interventions/
5. Kaplan, M. & Watson, K. (2024). Rep. Cori Bush under investigation by Justice Department over security spending. CBSNews.com. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cori-bush-justice-department-investigation-security-funds/
6. Calder, R. (2023). AOC, ‘squad’ spent $1.2M in campaign cash on private security despite calls to defund the police. NYPost Online. Retrieved from https://nypost.com/2023/08/19/defund-the-police-aoc-squad-spent-1-2m-on-security/