What does ‘Defund the Police’ really mean?

It’s a phrase that’s spurring momentum for fundamental change. It’s also drawing heated backlash.

When people advocate to “Defund the Police,” they’re frequently arguing for a variety of reforms and at least one shared goal: to address the historical racial injustice in policing in a way that better serves people of colour and saves lives.

This push for change comes amid a relentless roll call of black people needlessly dying. A few weeks after a Minneapolis police officer was filmed in May fatally holding his knee on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, sparking protests around the world, Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed by an officer in Atlanta after he’d fallen asleep in his car. By the time you’re reading this, there may be yet another horrific incident involving a black victim in the news cycle.

Some of the “Defund the Police” reforms now being proposed may help avoid such tragedies, by redesigning law enforcement to function less like a military presence in black communities and more like a public service that keeps the peace.

The notion that policing as currently constructed affects everyone equally in the US is belied by statistics. In 2019, black people accounted for 24% of those killed by police in the country, though they account for just 13% of the overall population, according to the Mapping Police Violence project. That year was not an anomaly.

Advocates for reform note that it’s common for more than a third of an American city budget to be directed to its police department, which may still nonetheless be unprepared for crucial tasks.

In a number of places, city officials are taking heed and committing to a rethink of police budgets. Minneapolis city council members said they’ll vote to disband the police department and replace it with a “new model of public safety,” while a resolution was introduced in Los Angeles to replace officers with unarmed responders, and Salt Lake City will cut its police department budget while funding more body cameras and providing fewer lethal weapons.

The data clearly demonstrates why there are calls for changes. In California, for example, black people accounted for nearly 16% of police killings last year but just 6.5% of the population – while white people accounted for 24.8% of police killings in the state and 36.8% of its population.

Appeals to address racial injustice in policing are not new. In 1968, the Kerner commission issued a report citing police brutality as the cause of urban unrest in a nation “moving toward two societies, one black and one white – separate and unequal.” That followed comparable commissions, and the publication of reports for similar reasons, in 1922, 1936, and 1943.

It's possible now that as the concept of fundamental police reform goes further mainstream, this time will be different.

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