One of the justifications cited by campaign is that she supports defunding the police.
It is a charge that Jessie Lopez and her allies have repeatedly denied.
Lopez campaign and independent expenditure campaign denies it in mailers to voters, calling it part of a “campaign of lies.”
Her landlord Albert Castillo – founder of Chicanos UNIDOs and leading rent control advocate – filed a lawsuit seeking to halt the recall on the grounds that the recall petition, among other things, falsely claimed Lopez supports defunding the police.
The problem with these repeated and emphatic denials is they are false. Lopez is a supporter of the defund-the-police movement.
Here she is other local radical progressive activists like Carlos Perea and Tracy La, posing as they wait to address the Santa Ana City Council via Zoom to urge, among other things, “defunding the police.”
That’s Lopez in the upper left hand corner.
Someone commented on Lopez’s post, “‘defunding the police’ that sounds scary.”
Lopez didn’t respond with “Oh no, you misunderstood, I don’t support defunding the police.” Instead, Lopez sought to assure the commenter that defunding the police was a good thing, and that it would improve the quality of life of Santa Ana residents.
Now, this was in June of 2020, at the heigh of the George Floyd anti-police riots and protests, when Lopez and other left-wing anti-police activist believed their moment had come. They were on the “right side of history” and as the vanguard of a new woke mass consciousness no longer felt the need to camouflage their true views about law enforcement.
As we know, that turned out not to be the case. Radicals like Lopez like to think they speak for that abstract notion of “the people,” but real, flesh-and-blood people like living in safe neighborhoods. They want more, not fewer police. They understand public safety requires enforcing laws and putting criminals behind bars – and they understand that requires having police.
The results of the defund the police movement are in: more crime, more civil disorder, more lawlessness.
That’s why politicians like Santa Ana Councilmember Jessie Lopez are running as far away as possible from their support for the defund-the-police movement.
