Melanin Aside: Who Is Val Demings?
A career law enforcer, U.S. Representative Val Demings (D-FL) currently serves Florida’s 10th district, which includes parts of Orlando and other pockets of central Florida. Demings as representative is now officially running a U.S. Senate campaign against Marco Rubio.
A career law enforcer, U.S. Representative Val Demings (D-FL) currently serves Florida’s 10th district, which includes parts of Orlando and other pockets of central Florida. Demings as representative is now officially running a U.S. Senate campaign against Marco Rubio. In an announcement, Demings told the local Orlando Sentinel this: “We are dealing with some critical issues. And we need bold, courageous leaders to deal with those issues. And the bottom line is, to many times Marco Rubio did not show up. And when he did, he did not have enough courage to fight for Florida.
Demings also tweeted out her first campaign video here:
A 27-year Veteran of Policing and Including 4 Years As Orlando, FL Chief of Police
During the 2020 Presidential campaign, Demings was tapped as the then former Vice President Joe Biden’s VP running mate, who has been billing herself as a reformer. Contrary to her record, in 2010, Demings stood by police officers accused of excessive force against an 84 year old man who had emerged from his local bar to find his car being towed for parking in the wrong location. A swift and aggressive altercation with the police ensued where the octogenarian’s neck was broken by slamming his head like a watermelon according to witnesses.
Demings defended the officer, 26-year-old Travis Lamont. She stated to a local newspaper, “After a review of the defensive tactic form by the training staff and Officer Lamont’s chain of command, it appears the officer performed the technique within department guidelines.” A jury disagreed and awarded the victim $880,000.
Today, Demings is politically re-branding herself as a police reformer, co-sponsoring the “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act,” the House Democrats’ reform proposal, calling for significant changes in police practices. According to POLITICO:
From 2009 to 2010—the final two full calendar years of her tenure as chief—the department reported 1,205 instances of officer use of force, an annual average of 602. That dropped to an average of 578 in the six years after her departure, a number that includes the last four months of Demings’ tenure before she retired in May 2011. Of the use-of-force incidents reported during Demings’ final two years, 54 percent involved black offenders, a number that dropped to 40 percent in the six years after Demings’ departure.
A decade after the controversial incident of excessive force, Demings’ view has not changed. Critics in the activist community and complainants of police brutality, and over policing under her watch amplify that Demings routinely made excuses for and routinely sided with police over community complainants. Her record demonstrates that she operated cautiously within the system, on behalf of the system despite longstanding complaints that the department was prone to excessive force.
Background and Family Life
Important to note. Both Val and her husband, Jerry Demings are career law enforcers and politicians who as African Americans are skyrocketing to power on the American political stage. We must excavate and examine under a microscope to what end. It is critical that we consider its potential impact and ultimately what this means for the black community. How will this play out as it relates to Law Enforcement Reform and the impending new policing laws being argued in the House of Representatives regarding to the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. And, we must learn more of their lineage* as it relates to Restitution and Reparations for American Descendants of Slavery AKA Foundational Black Americans, under the system that they serve.
*We will append to this article once we have more data on that lineage.
According to Wikipedia
Valdez Venita Demings (née Butler; born March 12, 1957) is an American politician who is the U.S. Representative from Florida’s 10th congressional district since 2017. The district covers most of the western half of Orlando and includes much of the area around Orlando’s resort parks. It includes many of Orlando’s western suburbs, including Apopka and Winter Garden. From 2007 to 2011, she was chief of the Orlando Police Department, its first female chief, capping a 27-year career with the department.
Demings was the Democratic nominee to represent Florida’s 10th congressional district in Congress in both 2012 and 2016. After losing in 2012 to Republican incumbent Daniel Webster she won in 2016 after the State Supreme Court mandated the creation of a new, majority-black district in Orlando.
On January 15, 2020, Speaker Nancy Pelosi selected Demings to serve as an impeachment manager in the first Senate trial of President Donald Trump. In early August 2020, Demings was said to be one of the top contenders to be Joe Biden‘s vice presidential running mate in the 2020 United States presidential election, along with Kamala Harris and Susan Rice.
Demings is a candidate for the Democratic Party‘s nomination in the 2022 United States Senate election.
Jerry L. Demings (born June 12, 1959) is an American politician and former law enforcement officer serving as Mayor of Orange County, Florida, in office since 2018. A Democrat, he previously served as Sheriff of Orange County, Florida, from 2009 to December 2018, and served as Chief of the Orlando Police Department and Director of Public Safety for Orange County, Florida. He was elected to become Mayor of Orange County in August 2018, becoming the first Democrat and first African American to be elected to that office.
