Gus Mattammal, Republican candidate in California Congressional District 15, shares his thoughts on education, race in America, running as a Republican in this very blue region, and more.

According to Chief of Police Bill Scott, the San Francisco Police Department is short about four hundred officers. That’s about eighteen percent below expected staffing levels. Increasing the number of police officers, Chief Scott argues, would decrease crime rates in San Francisco, and is crucial to his department’s crime fighting strategy. The “Defund the Police” movement, however, has criticized this approach, and instead argues that cities should invest less in the police and more in social services. This, so the argument goes, would make communities safer by stopping crime in its infancy while having the added benefit of entirely avoiding the penal system.