When you hear Democrat from Minnesota, you automatically think of the ‘defund the police’ movement, right? Well, there’s at least one in that demographic who no longer believes that way.
Enter Minnesota Representative Angie Craig.
Like most in her party, as well as a large number in her city, she was once of the mind that police in all forms should be defunded, abolished, or at the very least extremely limited.
Naturally, she surrounded herself with like minds. Minds like one of her staffers who once wrote on their social media account, “Burn. It. All. Down” during the violent riots of 2020 surrounding the death of George Floyd, according to Fox News.
That same staffer also once said that cities like Minneapolis should be funding “counselors, not cops.”
With such co-workers and a party that seems hell-bent on catering to criminals and not victims, Craig has been one to push for certain reforms in her state and the nation that have allowed crime to go widely unchecked.
But a rather harrowing experience seems to have left Craig with a different perspective.
According to police reports, Craig was attacked in an elevator in her apartment building in Washington DC last Thursday. A man, identified by police as 26-year-old Kendrid Hamlin, tried to prevent Craig from leaving the elevator. When Craig persisted in her efforts to get out, Hamlin allegedly punched her in the face. He might have done more had Craig not then thrown her hot coffee at him and squeezed past him to safety.
As Craig told KARE-TV, “He wasn’t going to let me out of that elevator if I hadn’t fought my way out.”
Now, this would be frightening enough. But Craig was even more troubled after learning how Hamlin was and how long his criminal record was.
According to a report from the Washington Examiner, Hamlin has spent the last eight or so years committing similar acts of violence and sexual assaults. And yet each time, he’s gotten off with a mere slap on the wrist. In fact, for one of his more recent crimes, the physical assault of US Capitol Police officers, Hamlin was only sentenced to 35 days in jail.
As police records show, his release from that jail stint happened just before his attack on Craig, so he clearly didn’t learn much, if anything, from his time behind bars.
And as the record shows, neither has the countless other times he’s spent in jail, doing ten days here, 30 days there.
But why would he? He gets a place to sleep, is given three square meals a day, and then after a few days of that, is released right back onto the streets with the ability to do it all over again.
Like most of us, the fact that he’s a known repeat offender and yet was able to roam the streets looking for his next victim is appalling to Craig. And it’s also why she’s now changed her tune on how criminals should be treated and prosecuted nationwide.
In fact, she’s so moved by the incident that she’s now proposing legislation that would keep men like Hamlin off the streets, according to CBS News.
On Tuesday, Craig called for what can only be called common sense reforms that allow for individuals who are repeat offenders, particularly of violent and or sexual assaults get locked up immediately without the possibility of being released within a matter of days.
As Craig said, “I got attacked by someone who the District of Columbia has not prosecuted fully over the course of almost a decade, over the course of 12 assaults before mine that morning… And so I think we have to think about how in the world we can make sure that we’re not just letting criminals out.”
Now, clearly, this isn’t going to make a good number of her co-workers very happy. But it’s probably because very few of them have ever experienced something like Craig just did. If they had, they would understand what’s at stake here.
Craig’s newfound passion will hopefully rub off on a few other Democrats.
