Rutherford Calls to Defund Police

The ranking Democrat in the South Carolina House of Representatives crashed a “Republican” budget hearing last week – threatening to cut funding for law enforcement and accusing the Palmetto State’s top cop of not doing his job.

All while four GOP lawmakers – including the speaker pro tempore of the House, former prosecutor Tommy Pope – sat on their hands.

The testy exchange – which was captured by our own Dylan Nolan – covered a lot of ground.

Aside from the funding discussion, S.C. minority leader Todd Rutherford blasted Mark Keel – chief of the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) – for allegedly opposing “progressive” sentencing reform.

Keel did not specifically address sentencing reform at the budget hearing, but when pushed by Rutherford he acknowledged a dramatic reduction in South Carolina’s prison population over the past decade-and-a-half could be viewed by the “common man” as correlating with a rise in violent crime.

Rutherford tries to pigeon hole Keel on sentencing reform, which sounds good on paper, but judicial lenience ends lives in South Carolina. Don't believe me? Read a few of the *numerous* pieces this news outlet has written on the issue
https://www.fitsnews.com/?s=Judicial+Leniency

Rutherford is advocating for policy that will silmotaneously guarantee that there are more criminals on the street and less law enforcement officers to respond to their crimes.

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