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The Memo: Michael Dukakis warns Democrats on crime

A generation ago, Michael Dukakis saw his chances of winning the presidency crushed after Republicans cast him as soft on crime.


Now he is warning his party not to make the same mistake.


The "defund the police" movement is “nuts,” Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988, told this column.


“I’m saying to myself, my God, what the hell is going on here?” Dukakis added during a 40-minute phone interview from his home in Brookline, Mass., late last week.


“On one hand, you have folks screaming and yelling about getting rid of policing, which makes no sense at all. And then on the other hand, you have some people totally misinterpreting what community policing is, just as we were really making huge progress,” he said.

Bratton presided over declining crime rates throughout his career. His approach was rooted in making police departments more representative of the communities they serve, as well as taking a more academic and data-driven approach to crime.
Bratton was always difficult to pigeonhole politically, as was once again made clear in a recent interview with Maureen Dowd of The New York Times.

More from The Hill here.



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