The $75 million policing budget for the just-concluded Democratic National Convention paid off for Chicago but also shows a stunning contrast with the money devoted at the height of the 2020 George Floyd riots, a retired Illinois police chief tells Fox News Digital.
"The security for the DNC is the largest police presence in the history of Chicago, as far as they go back of tracking of all local, state, county, suburban federal agencies, there's never been a larger police presence ever," retired Riverside, Illinois, police chief Tom Wetizel told Fox News Digital in an interview.
Weitzel recalled that when he was chief during the protests after the death of Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, the department "was not given the resources that we needed from outside our own agency when we would ask for them, and certainly not anywhere near this level."
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"People forget that the Democrats were the party of, and probably still are the party of defund the police, and now the Democratic Party at the Democratic National Convention has the largest police presence in Chicago history. I mean, that kind of strikes me as very strange," he said.
Ahead of the DNC, a local news outlet reported the White House's Office of Budget and Management allocated $75 million in federal funding for security at the convention, and most of the funds reportedly went to the Chicago Police Department.
"It would have a significant impact," Weitzel said when asked if those resources were provided to departments on the South Side – Chicago's heavily crime-ridden region – to deter crime.
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Every day during the convention, anti-Israel agitators took to the streets near the DNC to protest against the Democratic ticket's foreign policies, as well as other left-wing causes. Some were part of pro-Hamas groups and burned the American flag. Others waved Palestinian flags and chanted on bullhorns, "There is one solution, intifada revolution" and "Long live the intifada."
The Chicago Police Department said there were at least 74 arrests over the course of the convention's four days.
"Our city was on display for the world to see," Superintendent Larry Snelling told reporters last week. "I guarantee the world was watching. We showed again that this was not 1968."
During the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, approximately 600 people were arrested. The convention was held amid significant social unrest and marked by anti-Vietnam War protests.
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"I can tell you with a surety that they are the heroes that they are. Their training has paid off, their patience has paid off, their professionalism has paid off," Weitzel said of Chicago PD. "The Chicago Police Department [wasn't] the lead story for the night. The Chicago Police Department [wasn't] the lead story for abusing or alleged to have abused or overreacted."
