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Who should foot the bill for police overtime stemming from campaign rallies – taxpayers or campaigns?
- Taxpayers
- Campaigns
- Unsure
Democrats on Long Island are seething after learning that the extra-tight security measures around former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally at the Nassau Coliseum on Wednesday, Sept. 18, cost taxpayers $1 million in police overtime alone.
Ahead of the rally – which came just days after what the FBI called an apparent second assassination attempt on Trump’s life in Florida – Nassau County leaders outlined the extensive security measures that were being taken around the arena.
Among them were fully staffing the police department’s intelligence center, conducting multiple sweeps of the arena’s parking lot, and K9 dogs searching nearby woods.
"This will be the safest place in the country on Wednesday,” Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder told reporters ahead of the event.
But speaking at a press conference in Mineola on Thursday, Sept. 19, the Nassau County Legislature’s Democrat Minority Leader Delia Deriggi-Whitton called those security measures “unprecedented” and “far above anything else that we’ve had or anything we would consider typical.”
Democrat Leg. Seth Koslow decried the use of taxpayer money for a political event.
“Bruce Blakeman used the powers of his office to blatantly subvert campaign finance laws and provide a million dollars' worth of campaign contribution in the form of protection to Donald Trump,” Koslow said.
The county’s minority party filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) asking for an investigation into whether any campaign finance laws were broken.
Democrats want Trump’s campaign to reimburse the county for costs associated with securing the outside of the Nassau Coliseum. Trump’s campaign previously agreed to pay the arena upwards of $500,000, CBS New York reports.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican, defended the county’s actions in a statement, saying, “Nassau County provides security and safety to all public figures and public events regardless of party affiliation.”
He blasted Democrats' complaints as "disgraceful, inflammatory, and irresponsible," on Facebook.
"I guess Democrat leaders really do want Trump killed, but it ain't happening in Nassau County,” Blakeman added.
When informed of Blakeman’s accusation at Thursday's press conference, Deriggi-Whitton and Koslow were visibly stunned.
“We didn’t say the police should not be there. We want the police there. We want everyone safe,” Koslow told reporters. “But the campaign should pay for that additional service.”
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