Private security details cost Minneapolis taxpayers roughly $63,000 over the past three weeks, a spokesman for the city said, according to a Fox 9 report. Council members Andrea Jenkins, Phillipe Cunningham and Alondra Cano are outspoken supporters of efforts to defund the Minneapolis Police Department, the report stated.

Neither Cunningham, Jenkins nor Cano have responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. (RELATED: Black Corrections Officers Allegedly Barred From Guarding Chauvin File Discrimination Complaint)

Cunningham did respond to Fox 9’s request for comment, telling the outlet through a text message that, “I don’t feel comfortable publicly discussing the death threats against me or the level of security I currently have protecting me from those threats.” The security detail is temporary, he noted.

Jenkins said she has been asking for security since she became a council member.“My concern is the large number of white nationalist(s) in our city and other threatening communications I’ve been receiving,” she wrote in an email to FOX 9.

Minneapolis’s city council began pushing to defund the police after former police officer Derek Chauvin was charged with murder for the death of George Floyd, a black man who died May 25 in Minneapolis police custody.

The police department does not have reports of threats against city council members, a representative for Minneapolis Police told Fox 9. Jenkins did not report threats she’s received through phone messages, emails and social media because she’s busy handling aftermath from the pandemic and Floyd’s death, she told Fox 9.

Other city officials across the country faced criticism for using private security while railing against their police departments. Democratic Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez, for instance, reportedly used police officers as security over the past two months while calling for the department to be defunded.

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Source: https://dailycaller.com/2020/06/27/minneapolis-city-council-security-detail-defund-police/