The call to defund the police is part of the ongoing struggle to truly abolish slavery and the carceral systems that supplanted it—and it will take enormous creativity, innovation, healing, and political will to make that happen. "Defunding police" means something different to everyone, but the common theme involves cutting funding from police department budgets. Instead, we should be talking about how to provide more police funding so that we can hire more police officers and pay them higher salaries. This article is part of Abolition for the People, a series brought to you by a partnership between Kaepernick Publishing and LEVEL, a Medium publication for and about the lives of Black and Brown men. The reality is that "defund the police" means different things to different people. In these records you will find the most recent and the most authoritative articles on the topics, people and events that are shaping the criminal justice conversation. Defund the police is a call that's swept through protests and into the broader conversation about American policing. Yesh Nikam and Xander Cox. In Philadelphia, a police sergeant was struck by a pickup truck and a cop car was set on fire during the Walter Wallace Jr. demonstrations last month. It's a push to reallocate those funds into social programs. Open Queue. The LAPD budget has grown 58% over the last decade even as crime has fallen dramatically. Protests have spread across the United States for months now, along with calls for defunding local police departments. The core proposal emanating from this illegitimacy diagnosis is procedural justice, a concept that emphasizes . The same poll showed, however, that 57 percent of blacks support defunding the police. "Defund and Dismantle the Police" by Tony Webster is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 In May, George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer while in police custody. Jacob Bliss. The phrase "defund the police" has become a rallying cry in the wake of last summer's uprising for racial justice and a radical reimagining of policing and public safety. To take the most recent example, we are learning that "Defund the police" does not mean defunding the police. This is in one sense a last-resort policy: If cops cannot stop killing people, and black people . Justice costs more than police departments are worth. No matter what we choose to call it, defund the police, a reallocation of funding, or a total reimagination, research supports a public . This is why "defund the police"—a demand that only a marginal handful dared to put forward just months ago—has become a central slogan of the reëmergent B.L.M. Demonstrators in favor of defunding police in New York City, June 15. One year after the movement to "defund" law enforcement began to upend municipal budgets, many American cities are restoring money to their police departments or proposing to spend . In Miami . As we enter a new year and a new political season, calls to "defund the police" from elected officials across the country will no doubt continue. "Defund the police" is a clear policy goal of widespread U.S. and global protests over police brutality that are so substantial that they have at times put COVID-19 "below the fold." Although derided even by Democratic officials as the fever dream of radical abolitionists like Angela Davis and more recently Mariame Kaba, "defund the police" has gone mainstream, perhaps indelibly so. Take Southeastern Washington DC, where, according to the Washington Post, officials announced a $15 million police budget cut in mid-June. movement. Letters to the Editor June 14, 2020 at 1:27pm. Across the US, police funding has spiralled in recent decades, at a time when other public budgets have flat-lined or shrunk. Column: Defunding the Police: An Idea That Is Absurd. We've heard from a . Defunding the police is absurd. In both surveys, we found that the "defund the police" language reduced public support for protests by about 20 percentage points compared with asking about protests to reduce police brutality. Defund the Police sympathizer and so-called "Squad" member Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) reportedly spent tens of thousands of dollars are private security, paid for by the American taxpayer, even as she has repeatedly pushed for defunding the police since being elected to Congress. There are an estimated 18,000 police departments across the United States with, in total, more than $100 billion in funding. They are calling on Mayor Jacob Frey to defund the police by $45m and shift those resources into "community-led health and safety strategies." The Minneapolis police department currently uses . Originated by the Black Lives Matter movement and police reform activists, the slogan "defund the police" was introduced to the public last week and is quickly picking up steam with politicians, city councils and mayors throughout the country. To show how egregious this is, a study of the NYPD stop-and-frisk program found that well over 90% of people stopped by the police were not committing any crime and did not have any contraband or . Here is why we should not defund the police. Police Abolition. A new class on the subject of Race and Policing will be offered in the fall by Abe Daudi. Here's why we need to radically rethink public safety. The homicide rate in 2019 was the lowest since 1962. This is a common refrain not just from police departments but others who might not understand the basis of the defund movement. Research. This mantra can mean different things: reducing the money given to police departments, paring the size of the force, diverting some police . According to a recent poll, most Americans do not want to defund the police. We should defund the police, reallocate the funds that are given to them to social services and sectors of action in local communities that lift people up and promote their health and wellbeing . It is certainly not an exhaustive list, but a brief guide to some of the main arguments, issues, and existing efforts aimed at creating alternatives to policing. Editor's note: This Future View assesses the activist slogan "Defund the police.". Now a longtime demand from social-justice campaigners has become a rallying cry: Defund the police. Tuesday, June 9, 2020 1:08pm In the U.S. slave patrols and night watches were the beginning of a racially directed system of law enforcement designed to secure . L. & Criminology Online 63 (2020). The police are a broken legacy of a racist system and tasked with work they are not trained to do America's policing system is broken. We join millions of people around the nation, and the world, in denouncing . This page collects research and statistics about police brutality and police department budgets, toolkits and policy proposals for ending police brutality, and articles from news organizations about the George Floyd protests and government response. We can demand that our local officials (including city council members and mayors) stop allocating funds for the police to acquire more militarized equipment and instead ask for that money to go toward community-run violence-prevention programs. The argument supporting defunding is that the police handle public challenges that they are not well equipped to handle, or should not handle, on principle (MPD150, 2020; Vitale, 2017). Calls to defund the police often elicit fear. 'Defund the police': What it means and what the research says on whether more police presence reduces crime. The actions of the police officer shed light on the repeated unnecessary use of force for non-violent offenses and non-emergency calls. Qualitatively improving the policing profession . But when asked if Joe Biden had the right idea in not wanting to defund the police and instead "to condition federal money on reforms," she answered, "Joe Biden believes that we need to . Defunding or re-appropriating law enforcement funding is an impulsive, counterproductive approach to addressing issues that require a systemic set of solutions. Defund the Police - Top 3 Pros and Cons. Recent calls for police reform have included campaigns to "defund the police"—either through outright elimination of the police force or, more moderately, through diverting some funding to other programs—in order to reduce the number of interactions that individuals have with police and thus the risk of police abuse. We explore what "defund the police" means to criminologists, activists and legal scholars, recent research and what the future of policing in America might look like. Campaigns to defund the police and prison system do not argue that every prison should close tomorrow and every police officer be sacked the day after - they argue that social problems are . By Nikki Jones, author of The Chosen Ones: Black Men and the Politics of Redemption. First, shifting power to policed populations . The call to "defund the police" may make sense, according to research. As a Republic, Americans vote for the politicians they believe will represent their best interests. It could make things worse. Now is not the time to defund the police, but to do the opposite — to invest in our police agencies to build on local and national police reforms. Budgets are not created in a vacuum. Defunding is, in the first instance, a call to stem the upward flow of spending on American police departments. The grass-roots movement in the wake of George Floyd's death to defund the police — or at least reallocate some police money to other community services — is not something Democratic . (Lawrence . Jon Guze. By Jason Scavone. Amid the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020, calls to "defund the police" began to populate protest signs and social media posts. This will be a relief . In order to maintain your grip on power, you need to reform, modernize . For budget officials, it clearly means that there is a new debate about just how to fund core functions of local government designed to support public safety and justice. The police are not a neutral body, and the institution is inherently biased. In response to George Floyd's recent killing by police, Minneapolis decided to disband its current police department and invest more in community-led public safety measures. June 25, 2020. Defunding the police is a bad idea. 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