Republicans are talking about Walz’s policing record. Why do voters in low-crime communities care?
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With Gov. Tim Walz now a vice presidential candidate, policing policies have been put front and center on the campaign trail.
In particular, Walz’s response to civil unrest in the days after George Floyd’s murder has become campaign fodder for former President Donald Trump, who is running on the Republican ticket with U.S. Sen. JD Vance.
Walz, a Democrat, faced criticism from the left and the right for his actions at the time, but there seemed to be plenty of blame to go around for the unrest in Minneapolis. For instance, a 2022 report showed that Minneapolis public safety officials neglected their own emergency plans as protests got out of hand.
Recordings unearthed by ABC News show that in 2020 Trump praised Walz’s response to the riots. But in 2022, the Minnesota Peace and Police Officers Association endorsed Walz’s opponent, Republican candidate Scott Jensen, saying Walz was “missing in action” when it came to supporting law enforcement.
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“Law and order” messaging do well on the campaign trail. But why is that the case even in communities largely unaffected by crime?
As part of our Talking Sense series, correspondent Catharine Richert spoke with David Squier Jones, a criminologist at the Center for Homicide Research to find out. His responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Politicians talk a lot about crime in communities largely unaffected by it. Why is this messaging so resonant in these communities?
Americans tend to have an inflated sense of crime occurring in their communities that don’t gel with crime statistics. We saw a huge crime decrease over the course of the 1990s and we had a blip in the last few years leading to and during the pandemic.
But the community sense when you poll folks in urban communities, but also in rural communities — and especially in rural communities — is they worry that they’re going to be affected by crime.
They worry that crime is going to come to their community, that the demographics in their community are changing due to immigration and other factors, that they’re no longer safe in their home, that someone’s going to burglarize them and they’re more afraid of being alone.
So it’s an interesting change that's occurring that's not borne out by the facts, and rural communities especially tend to be quite safe.
Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance said last week that Walz ‘is a guy who says that he stands for public safety but actively encouraged the rioters who burned down Minneapolis.’ Is Vance’s characterization accurate, and what factors were going into the response at that time?
With respect to Sen. Vance’s assertion that Gov. Walz encouraged rioting, I have not found evidence to support that statement.
I do know that he was sympathetic to the frustrations that many of the protesters after George Floyd’s death felt, not only in terms of what they saw and what occurred, but … in how the police have treated communities of color, communities of poverty.
He was sympathetic to that, but I did not see anything, read anything, or hear anything that he encouraged active rioting.
Vance is specifically pointing out Walz’s reaction to the civil unrest in the days after George Floyd’s murder. But more broadly, [his statement] implies a certain type of record on policing. What does Walz’s record actually tell us about how he’s approached the question of policing during his nearly eight years now as governor?
His record is mixed in terms of encouraging police reforms. But he has also supported police in terms of increasing funding for police departments throughout the state.
It’s a delicate balance to walk, and I think he has tried to do that. He has seen the reality and the need for policing. He opposed the Minneapolis ballot measure to defund the Minneapolis Police Department.
From my standpoint, that means that he sees a need for policing, but he also sees a need for better policing, which is why he’s revamped our Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission.
He has embraced the various different reforms, in terms of banning choke holds, in terms of how children are treated in schools, in terms of how officers are required to step in and report misconduct.
I think he’s looking for better policing, not defunding policing, not removing policing and he is certainly not anti-police.
Correction (Aug. 13, 2024): An earlier version of this story misspelled David Squier Jones’ name. The story has been updated.