What 'Defund The Police' Means (And Doesn't Mean) And Where It Came From

As demonstrators gather around the United States in response to the killings of unarmed Black citizens George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade, among numerous others, to protest police brutality and systemic racism against the Black community, one slogan, brandished on cardboard signs and vibrant posters, has had a particularly contentious reception among the American public: “Defund the police.” Its polarizing effect has pierced the national discourse to a degree that previous calls for public safety overhauls have not, largely thanks to its recent popularization by Black Lives Matter. Its origins, nevertheless, go back decades and, today, provide essential tricks about America’s current cultural landscape.


Defunding the police today requires not only cutting cash from police budgets, which often constitute up to 1/3 of a city’s entire financial range, although reinvesting it into transformative justice programs that emphasize community-building efforts, like mental health services, over policing. For context, programs like affordable housing and health care have been gradually defunded over the last 50 years, while police budgets have remained unchanged and even enlarged. In New York City, as an example, the funding for law enforcement grew nearly 30 percent over the last decade and is bigger than the Departments of Health, Homeless Services, Housing Preservation and Development, and Youth and Community Development combined. This gap between supporting the roots of a community’s well-being and the forces that punish marginalization are at the heart of calls to defund police.


Though the words themselves are clear — calling for departments to literally be defunded — the phrase’s interpretation is often mistaken with outright abolition. Many worry that, without a police force, violent crimes, like mass shootings and armed robberies, will proliferate. Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter and principal at Black Futures Lab, attributes this confusion to the political spin machine. “I think the polarization of this conversation is quite intentional,” she told MTV News. It’s key to note that there is a distinction between abolition and defunding the police, though conflating the two could lead those who would support the latter to shrink back from the movement. “When people mention they wish to defund the police, that’s what they mean and it’s not unclear. We weren’t unclear any time people were talking about wanting to defund Offered Parenthood.”


The current calls to defund police are distinct from the “abolish the police” movement, which sees contemporary policing systems as behind reform and calls for their elimination and replacement with new systems. While “defund the police” has semantic similarities with the more radical police-abolition movement, it does not demand the elimination of police; rather, it calls for a reimagining of public safety while still sustaining a version of police forces. “Defunding the police isn't synonymous with abolishing the police, although that doesn’t mean there isn’t a broader conversation to be had about how we resize the role of policing in our communities,” Garza added.


Several scholars propose that the push to defund the police originated among the prison abolition and Black liberation movements, though it is unclear any time or where. Simon Balto, author of Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power, cites the Black Panthers’s push for community control of the police in the ‘60s and ‘70s, along with “partial divestment in the police and reinvestment in social goods.” And according to Jordan T. Camp, who co-authored Incarcerating the Crisis: Freedom Struggles and the Rise of the Neoliberal State, the phrase can be traced back at least to the formation of Important Resistance, a grassroots agency working to dismantle the prison-industrial intricate, co-founded by Angela Davis, Rose Braz, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore.


Although the ambiguous, grassroots beginnings of one of 2020’s fiercest calls to action may be why it has been able to take on a life of its own among today’s young activists and allies. Since no one entity has a claim to the slogan, the futures it calls for are as boundless as its beginnings, beginnings rooted in Black safety and freedom that extends to all people struggling against state-sanctioned violence.


“[Defunding the police] isn't just a Black distribute because so several people go about not obtaining support in moments as soon as they experience violence and harm,” Philip McHarris, an activist and Yale PhD candidate, told MTV News. We know from recent events alone how painfully true this is. Police brutality at the continuous George Floyd demonstrations is being committed against protestors of all backgrounds — including a non-violent, 75-year-old white man who suffered a brain injury.  Race, gender, or age doesn’t preclude anyone from becoming a victim, though Black and indigenous people suffer the highest rates of violence at the hands of police.


“We have people who were severely injured by police officers,” mentioned Carmen Sabater, a former NYPD officer and currently a civil rights attorney with V. James DeSimone Law representing a young activist who was run over by a LAPD vehicle at a recent protest.  “We require a community-based system investing in our communities and reducing the necessary for a police corps.”


Given that activists are attempting systemic change of this magnitude while in an election year, mass mobilization and engagement is crucial. In the past few weeks alone, the protests have garnered tangible changes. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, as an example, pledged to cut up to $150 million from the police financial range and reinvest into social and youth programs. New York’s city council pledged to cut up to $1 billion from the NYPD financial range. And the GOP has a upcoming police reform bill in the Senate.


Well aware of this and the upcoming presidential election in November, Garza has been focusing on building Black political power through campaigns like Black to the Ballot, a voter initiative from Black Futures Lab to register new voters and empower the population to come out of recent events into a higher end place.


“If you’re unhappy with the way policing is happening in your communities, you could actually make your voice heard by making sure your mayor is responsible for who they select,” she mentioned, referring to mayoral power over police chiefs and budgets. “We have incredible power in this moment. Our power is in the streets for sure. Our power is changing hearts and minds. Nevertheless our power is also changing the people who make the rules.”