Actress Alyssa Milano may be a social justice warrior when it comes to demanding that police departments be defunded, but all it reportedly took for her to call 911 for help was a teenager shooting at squirrels with an air gun.
Milano called the police to her 8,000-square-foot mansion north of Los Angeles Sunday when she suspected an armed gunman was on the 1.39-acre property, the UK’s Daily Mail reported. The response to Milano’s gated community in Bell Canyon was huge, including a Sheriff’s Department helicopter circling overhead, six squad SUVs, a K-9 unit and a Fire Department vehicle.
No social workers or crisis-intervention specialists were called.
Milano and her husband, talent agent Dave Bugliari, reportedly told deputies that their dogs had been scared by a sound, the Daily Mail said. They described the suspect as a 40-year-old male with a rifle. But when a male teenager who was shooting at squirrels on the property realized that he had triggered the call, he called police to tell them what was going on.
After more than three hours of searching the area, deputies met with startled neighbors at a local community center to explain what had happened, calling the incident “Squirrelgate.”
This hypocrite calls the police,sends in the police airship & many cars. Did she tell these wonderful law enforcement officers that she wants to “DEFUND THE POLICE” to their face? #AlyssaMilano why didn’t you call a social worker or a community peacemaker? https://t.co/1YkimF9smd
Milano posted a tweet Tuesday saying it was her neighbor who first called police on Sunday. After being notified, her husband called 911 to check on when deputies would arrive, she said.
“These are exactly the type of situations that police officers are trained for and should be responding to, and we will always support police having the resources they need for appropriate policing actions,” Milano added.
Apparently, rightwing media & trolls have decided that they should target me because my neighbor called the police after seeing a person dressed in black holding a rifle behind my home where I live with my young children and husband. Here is my statement and what really happened. pic.twitter.com/RwnSd9XCs0
The actress has made repeated demands to defund law enforcement. She urged her 3.7 million Twitter followers in July to sign an online petition to cut the Los Angeles Police Department’s funding by 90 percent. She made no attempt to reconcile her comment Tuesday about adequate resources for a police response like she saw Sunday with a 90 percent funding cut.
Milano tweeted in June about an armored vehicle that a West Virginia police department had received, suggesting that money could have been used to feed or fund community programs. She apparently missed the fact that the department had received the vehicle for free.
Last month, Milano tweeted: “Turn up the sound. This is why we protest. And we are not going to stop. #DefundThePolice.”
Turn up the sound. This is why we protest. And we are not going to stop. #DefundThePolice
A neighbor was perturbed by the juxtaposition between Milano’s public statements and her private behavior. “She can tweet those things because at the end of the day, she lives behind gates in a gated community,” the neighbor told the Daily Mail. “She knows the police will come to save her. But what about all those people who don’t have that luxury and live in unsafe neighborhoods? She obviously doesn’t care.”
The neighbor added that the law enforcement response Sunday probably cost “thousands of dollars” and could have been avoided if Milano sent her husband into the yard to find out what was going on before calling 911.
I guess when you have white privilege you can choose to have cops bust a kid for using an air gun, but defend a thug and criminal for resisting arrest!
Twitter users were no less critical, questioning Milano’s sanity and accusing her of hypocrisy. “Why didn’t she call a social worker and a priest instead?” one commenter asked. Another called her “the Karen of police.”
Milano said she wants to see non-police professionals respond to “addiction and mental health crises and non-violent events so that these brave officers can do the jobs they are so good at handling, as they demonstrated this weekend.”
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