A veteran Harlem lawmaker blasted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for backing her rival in the Democratic primary and vowed that the socialist firebrand’s “defund the police” agenda will be roundly rejected.
“AOC supports defunding the police. My community opposes defunding the police,” said Assemblywoman Inez Dickens, who is seeking re-election to a fourth term after previously serving in the City Council.
Ocasio-Cortez is backing housing activist Delsenia Glover in the 70th Assembly District against incumbent Dickens.
As The Post reported Monday, AOC has endorsed a slate of insurgent candidates along with the left-wing Working Families Party in a bid to topple seven veteran assembly incumbent Democrats, including Dickens.
The defund the police mantra became a rallying cry for AOC and other progressives following the police killing of a handcuffed and prone George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
But Republicans attacked Democratic candidates in the general election of 2020, saying the defund the police movement condoned lawlessness amid a spike in crime. Some Democrats blamed the leftists’ push to defund the police with costing the party seats while Eric Adams won the New York City mayoralty last year as a foe of gutting the NYPD.
Now mainstream Democrats like Dickens, facing primaries from AOC-backed challengers from the left, are making the congresswoman eat her own words as violence has gripped the city.
Dickens said Ocasio-Cortez is out of step with Harlemites fed up with crime.
“There have been so many shootings in my community. My constituents are hollering for more police. They want to be able to call the police,” Dickens said.
Dickens in March was one the first prominent black Democratic lawmakers to publicly say the legislature needed to tighten up the no-cash bail law to curb a crime wave and proposed a bill that would make throwing or smearing a victim with feces or other bodily fluids a felony crime — after a sicko allegedly smeared his own crap on a woman on a Bronx subway platform.
“AOC is trying to build a political agenda my community doesn’t agree with. She’s trying to take over the Assembly, she’s trying to take over Congress,” Dickens said.
“She’s talking about her political agenda after a subway shooting, after ten people were slaughtered in Buffalo, after an innocent 11-year old was shot and killed from a guy on a scooter Who is going to police us? We can’t have a police less society — unless we have a junta,” Dickens said.
The AOC-backed challenge to Dickens, 72, is not an idle threat. Democratic socialist Kristin Richardson last year was elected to the Council representing Harlem.
Dickens is part of the Harlem establishment. She followed in the footsteps of her father, Lloyd Dickens, a former state assemblyman, and uncle, Thomas Dickens, who also was an assemblyman and a state judge.
Ocasio-Cortez had no immediate comment.
But the congresswoman has often defended her support of defund the police, claiming her position has been mischaracterized. It’s about shifting resources from law enforcement to other services to reduce poverty and prevent criminality, she said.
“What does an America with defunded police look like to you? The good news is that it actually doesn’t take a ton of imagination. It looks like a suburb,” AOC said in June 2020.
“Affluent white communities already live in a world where they choose to fund youth, health, housing etc more than they fund police. These communities have lower crime rates not because they have more police, but because they have more resources to support [a] healthy society in a way that reduces crime.
“When a teenager or preteen does something harmful in a suburb (I say teen bc this is often where lifelong carceral cycles begin for Black and Brown communities), White communities bend over backwards to find alternatives to incarceration for their loved ones to `protect their future’, like community service or rehab or restorative measures.”
Ocasio-Cortez continued, “Affluent White suburbs also design their own lives so that they walk through the world without having much interruption or interaction with police at all aside from community events and speeding tickets (and many of these communities try to reduce those, too!)”
During a town hall meeting after the 2020 elections, AOC said, “I believe the path toward justice is a long arc. Safety is not just an officer with a badge and a gun.”
“Our [police budget] is too high,” she said, citing a $6 billion figure for the NYPD.
