By Ashley Hackett, MinnPost — Jan 28, 2022
Hello and welcome back to the D.C. Memo. This week you can find me obsessing over my Wordle score. Too much of my mental health is hanging on whether or not I complete each daily puzzle (I haven’t lost yet, but I am afraid to imagine what will happen if I do). If you don’t know what Wordle is, please don’t look it up. You’ll get addicted! Aside from strange, Twitter-fueled word game addictions, here’s what we’re talking about this week: President Joe Biden gets snippy on a hot mic, Rep. Tom Emmer’s growing influence in the GOP and Rep. Angie Craig introduces a bill to fund the police.
Craig is funding the police
Second District Rep. Angie Craig is officially rebuking any Republicans’ claims that she wants to defund the police. Craig introduced a bill this week that would increase funding for local police departments.
Craig’s “Invest to Protect Act of 2022” is a bipartisan bill that would provide $50 million in grants for small and mid-sized police departments to invest in training, equipment, personnel support and mental health resources. Police departments with 200 officers or less would be eligible, and Craig’s press release on the bill said 95 percent of police departments in her district would fall into that category.
The bill currently has 17 Republican and 21 Democratic cosponsors, including Third District Rep. Dean Phillips.
“Local law enforcement officers put their lives on the line to protect and serve their communities – oftentimes working on strained budgets without the equipment and training they need to reduce crime and keep Minnesotans safe,” Craig said. “It’s long past time that Congress stepped up and enacted legislation to ensure our smaller and mid-size police departments have the resources necessary to do their jobs safely and effectively.”
Funding from the bill would go towards investments in officer safety, de-escalation and domestic violence response training as well as body cameras.