The New York City mayoral candidate endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, wants to defund the New York Police Department, but also pays for private security in her Brooklyn neighborhood.
Maya Wiley, who has called for cutting $1 billion from the NYPD budget, has paid the annual fees to the Prospect Park South Charitable Trust to fund a private security guard who drives around their neighborhood.
She claimed her life partner, Harlan Mandel, was making the payments without her knowledge, according to the New York Post.
Wiley admitted she and Mandel had paid for the private security patrol in the past but stopped at some unspecified time.
Mandel allegedly began paying for the security patrol again without telling her, Wiley claimed.
In December, Wiley claimed private security was “ridiculous and we shouldn’t have it.”
Most of the other NYC mayoral candidates have come out against defunding the police, including former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.
Another mayoral candidate, Eric Adams, directly confronted Wiley about her position, arguing she would put New Yorkers’ lives in danger.
Wiley and Ocasio-Cortez “want to slash the police department budget and shrink the police force at a time when black and brown babies are being shot in our streets,” Adams said.
“We want justice and equality and safety,” he added. “But when you start doing it with policies while young people are being shot in our streets, that can be dangerous to our children and our families.”
Wiley responded and claimed Adams’ criticisms “sounded like the talking points of Tucker Carlson.”
“It sounded like the kind of talking points that is actually going to send us backward into the discrimination, humiliation and trauma that was not smart policing — it was unconstitutional policing,” she claimed.
