MI-SEN: Abdul El-Sayed distances himself from past defund-the-police rhetoric [View all]

Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed is downplaying his past rhetoric around defunding the police, saying his approach to the issue has been influenced by his time helping run health services in Wayne County jails.

“I want to be clear, I actually never, never called for defunding. My goal in that conversation was to help everybody to understand what we were talking about,” El-Sayed said in a recent interview with The Detroit News.

“Law enforcement exists for a reason, but ideally you want to make sure that there are not folks out there committing crimes in the first place,” he added.

“Structurally, we got to get right about the fact that too often crime is a function of the investment that we make in certain communities, and I think we need to be making a lot more investments in things like quality education and housing.”



https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2025/11/15/abdul-el-sayed-distances-himself-from-past-defund-the-police-rhetoric/87276996007/