Communities will still be 'safe' without cops, says Ilhan Omar - but fails to explain how Americans will be protected or crimes investigated without law enforcement

Ilhan Omar said Sunday that American communities will still be 'safe' even without law enforcement and the dismantlement of police departments, claiming that they would be replaced with something else – but she did not specify what that would be.

'I think that's really where the conversation is going wrong, because no one is saying that the community is not going to be kept safe,' Omar told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday morning.

The progressive Minnesota representative asserted that crimes would still be investigated and there would still be a 'proper response when community members are in danger.'

'What we are saying is, the current infrastructure that exists as policing in our city should not exist anymore,' she asserted. 'And we can't go about creating a different process with the same infrastructure in place. And so dismantling it, and then looking at what funding priorities should look like as we reimagine a new way forward is what needs to happen.'

When asked who would replace the police if they are defunded and disbanded, Omar dodged the question – and suggested that instead of completely ridding the world of police, the departments would just be rebuilt.

She claimed that the city she represents in Congress would now begin engaging in 'a one-year process of what happens as we go through the process of dismantling the department and starting anew.'

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Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar claimed Americans will still be 'safe' without cops – as she failed to provide an alternative for police officers in the face of the defund movement

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'No one is saying that the community is not going to be kept safe,' Omar told CNN on Sunday morning. 'What we are saying is, the current infrastructure that exists as policing in our city should not exist anymore'

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At the end of May, the Minneapolis Third Police Precinct was burned by rioters that broke out after the death of George Floyd in the city

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The riots and protest were sparked in Minneapolis after a white police officer there killed a black man during an arrest – and the demonstrations spread in cities across the country

Minneapolis police chief pledges reforms in wake of Floyd death

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All 13 members of the Minneapolis City Council voted earlier this month to disband the city's police department after a video went viral of white cop, Derek Chauvin, holding his knee on George Floyd's neck during an arrest for more than eight minutes.

Floyd could be heard in the bystander video claiming he was in pain and that he could not breathe until he eventually went limp and was taken away in an ambulance.

The 46-year-old native Texan died in police custody and Chauvin is being tried for second-degree murder.

The incident spared three weeks of nationwide protests and unrest, including riots, looting and arson in hundreds of cities across the country – and peaceful protests continue across the country.

Many protesters, and far-left Democratic lawmakers, have begun pushing a movement to defund the police – claiming that systemic racism is rooted in the establishment and will always disproportionately target black people.

'You can't really reform a department that is rotten to the root,' Omar said of Minneapolis' police department. 'What you can do is rebuild.'

'And so this is our opportunity, you know, as a city, to come together, have the conversation of what public safety looks like, who enforces the most dangerous crimes that take place in our community,' she said, still not giving a definitive answer on who would replace police.

'This is, again, just the process of going through this together,' she claimed, adding that there needs to be some sort of separation between the crimes that can be responded to by people other than police officers.

Some progressive Democrats have claimed that police can be replaced, in some cases, by social workers or mental health professionals.

'It's, again, a reminder that, you know, police officers can't continue to be judge, jury, and executioner,' Omar told CNN. 'We're not only seeing cases where there is, you know, mortal danger to police officers where they might take a shot, but the cases of people who are subdued being killed by police officers, people who are being shot in the back. It's just really quite disheartening to see the continuation of images like this appear.'