Vice President JD Vance said on Thursday that cities must solve their police recruitment issues after a beatdown in Cincinnati in which a man and woman were attacked by multiple people.
“You had, I mean, basically a woman who was just an innocent bystander who got punched in the face by a grown man,” Vance told the Ruthless Podcast. “That’s being investigated. Hopefully, those folks are brought to justice. Just a really disgusting act of violence.”
“Part of the story there is that there weren’t enough police officers at the Cincinnati Jazz Festival. Why aren’t there enough police officers? Because there aren’t enough police officers in Cincinnati,” he added.
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“I think the biggest thing, and obviously, we can help this at the federal level, but the most important thing that states and cities can do is to actually solve the law enforcement recruitment challenge that we have,” he said.
Vance said that current and veteran police officers are discouraging their relatives from joining the police force.
“And if you talk to local law enforcement, they’ll tell- you know, sometimes you hear heartbreaking stories of a fourth, fifth-generation cop who says, ‘I tell my son or daughter, do not go into law enforcement because it’s so uncomfortable,’ because they got attacked so much, especially back in 2020, 2021. And that’s just left a really bad hangover.”
Vance’s comments came after six people have now been charged in last weekend’s brutal street beating in Cincinnati as police hunt for the three remaining suspects, city officials said at a news conference Friday.
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Authorities had previously said five people had been charged, three of whom had been arrested.
Cincinnati Police Chief Teresa Theetge said Friday that six people had now been charged with felonious assault and aggravated rioting. The city’s fugitive apprehension unit is pursuing the three suspects who have not been captured yet.
“We’ve got to get the best and the brightest in law enforcement,” Vance said. “I think the most important thing is local governments. You know, you still got a lot of blue, big city mayors, people who maybe have some, some memories of the defund the police movement. Maybe they themselves were actually advocating defending the police. They’ve got to say, ‘Okay, this was a crazy moment.’”
“We got to support our local cops, and we got to get good people back into law enforcement, because pretty much every big city police department is really understaffed,” he added.