Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed is downplaying his past rhetoric around defunding the police, saying his approach to the issue has been influenced by his time helping run health services in Wayne County jails.

“I want to be clear, I actually never, never called for defunding. My goal in that conversation was to help everybody to understand what we were talking about,” El-Sayed said in a recent interview with The Detroit News.

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