photo via Demings for Congress
As longtime cranks and shit-stirrers, we can find plenty of ways to take potshots at the record of Val Demings. The current Florida U.S> representative and Senate hopeful made her bones leading the Orlando Police Department, historically one of the most violent police forces in the United States, a country full of trigger-happy thugs in uniform.
She was in the upper echelons of the Orlando Police Department when a Central Florida multi-agency vice squad based in Orlando harassed local strip clubs and eventually raided Orlando Weekly. During her tenure as top cop, she reduced slap-on-the-wrist punishments for violent police officers to even more negligible reprimands. The one thing you can't ding Val Demings for is being insufficiently pro-police.
But that's what the feckless Sen. Marco Rubio tried to do recently. Rubio took Demings' regular admissions that there is a problem with racism and violence in American policing (and she would know *bow tie spin*) as a sign that she did not support police.
"When she decided she wanted to be vice president and tried to impress the Biden people, she chose to begin to attack law enforcement," Rubio said in an interview with Fox News. "When someone uses their former service in uniform with a badge as the foundation to give them the credibility to say these things, it’s incredibly damaging."
We understand that Rubio and Demings are vying to be Florida's next senator, but Rubio's making an insane allegation based just on Demings' own words on the subject. That's before you even account for the fact that the reason she's a known political figure came from decades of service in an actual police department. So, though we might cringe to be on a cop's side, it was a bit satisfying when Demings conjured images of little Marco cowering under blankets in her response to him.
“For him to suggest — the lifelong politician Marco Rubio — that I have turned my back on the men and women that I — while Marco Rubio was home in his bed sleeping — that I helped to go respond to some dark, scary places, dealing with some dark, dangerous people, scary people, for him to suggest that I turned my back on law enforcement is just an indication of how desperate he is,” she said during a campaign appearance in Davie.
A begrudging two points for Demings for that clean takedown.
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