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Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin voted with socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad against $2.9 million in funding for the NYPD in a March 9 appropriations bill passed by the House with majorities from both parties.
The NYPD funding, an earmark inserted into the bill from Staten Island GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, will go toward the acquisition of new forensic equipment, personal protective gear and department’s K9 unit.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act 2022 funded more than 200 police departments and related organizations around the country with law enforcement allocations totaling $175 million in all, according to data compiled by The Post.
The largest expenditures included $8.24 million for public safety comms systems in Virginia; $5.6 million for similar comms equipment in San Luis Obispo, Calif.; $5 million for the North Orange County Public Safety Task Force; $4.8 million for radio infrastructure improvements for the a Sheriff’s office in Nevada; and $4 million for campus security at West Virginia’s Shepherd University.
Zeldin, a frontrunner for the state’s Republican gubernatorial nomination, has historically been a critic of the defund the police movement.
“From the autonomous zone in Seattle, which saw multiple shootings and 911 calls related to robberies and assaults from the area triple, to right next door in New York City, it’s clear the movement to defund the police erodes our public safety,” Zeldin said in a release from July 2020.
All told 54 Republicans voted against the measure. They joined 15 of the chamber’s most progressive Democrats including AOC, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-Bronx).
“The $1.5 trillion, 2,700-plus page Omnibus was packed with Democrat poison pills, ridiculously micromanaged by Pelosi’s office to suit her very misguided agenda, and released just hours before the vote, giving members no time to read through even a fraction of it,” Zedin told The Post.
“This was one monster bill loaded with way too much crap I don’t support, and a massively dysfunctional process mortgaging our kids’ future for Pelosi’s political games.”
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