Defunding police departments will make communities less safe, but following best practices nationwide, tying federal aid to enforcing those standards, and giving police departments the power to fire bad officers will bring change, Rep. Will Hurd, a former undercover CIA agent, said Tuesday.
"We know what best practices are," the Texas Republican said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "We should be following best practices across the country and all police departments should be doing that."
Hurd said he often uses an example when talking about the lack of training many police officers receive.
"One out of every 10 stops that a police officer does involves a mental health issue," said Hurd. "Yet police departments mostly around the country only require eight hours of training when it comes to mental health."
It's time to make standards and tie federal dollars to them, said Hurd, and departments who don't follow them won't get that money.
"Let's make sure the tax dollars that we're spending are used wisely on those best practices. That's one way to do it, and we also need to empower police chiefs to be able to fire bad cops," said Hurd. "Police chiefs and everybody else on the force knows who those bad police officers are."
However, arbitration proceedings allow such officers to return to work 46% of the time, said Hurd.
He added that everyone is outraged by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but at the same time, police departments keep the nation safe.
"They're enabling our ability to protest and March and exercise our First Amendment, so if we're able to make sure we're following best practices, make sure the police chiefs are able to fire folks and then make sure you can hold — the civilians can hold police liable when police go outside of their responsibility."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.