US protesters demand ‘defund the police’. What does it mean?

Protesters in the United States are pushing to “defund the police” over the death of George Floyd and other black Americans killed by law enforcement. Their chant has become rallying cry – and a stick for President Donald Trump to use on Democrats as he portrays them as soft on crime.

But what does “defund the police” mean? It’s not necessarily about gutting police department budgets.

What is the ‘defund the police’ movement

Supporters say it isn’t about eliminating police departments or stripping agencies of all of their money. They say it is time for the country to address systemic problems in policing in America and spend more on what communities across the US need, like housing and education.

State and local governments spent US$115 billion on policing in 2017, according to data compiled by the Urban Institute.

“Why can’t we look at how it is that we reorganise our priorities, so people don’t have to be in the streets during a national pandemic?” Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza asked during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Activists acknowledge this is a gradual process.

The group MPD150, which says it is “working towards a police-free Minneapolis”, argues that such action would be more about “strategically reallocating resources, funding, and responsibility away from police and toward community-based models of safety, support, and prevention”.

“The people who respond to crises in our community should be the people who are best-equipped to deal with those crises,” the group wrote on its website.

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What are US lawmakers saying?

Senator Cory Booker said he understands the sentiment behind the slogan, but it’s not a slogan he will use.

The New Jersey Democrat told NBC’s Meet the Press that he shares a feeling with many protesters that Americans are “over-policed” and that “we are investing in police, which is not solving problems, but making them worse when we should be, in a more compassionate country, in a more loving country.”

California Democrat Congresswoman Karen Bass, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said part of the movement is really about how money is spent.

“Now, I don’t believe that you should disband police departments,” she said in an interview with CNN. “But I do think that, in cities, in states, we need to look at how we are spending the resources and invest more in our communities.

“Maybe this is an opportunity to re-envision public safety,” she said.

President Donald Trump and his campaign view the emergence of the “Defund the Police” slogan as a spark of opportunity during what has been a trying political moment. Trump’s response to the protests has sparked widespread condemnation. But now his supporters say the new mantra may make voters, who may be otherwise sympathetic to the protesters, recoil from a “radical” idea.

Trump seized on the slogan last week as he spoke at an event in Maine.

“They’re saying defund the police,” he said. “Defund. Think of it. When I saw it, I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘We don’t want to have any police,’ they say. You don’t want police?”

Is there any push to actually defund police departments?

Yes, or at least to reduce their budgets in some major cities.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that the city would move funding from the NYPD to youth initiatives and social services, while keeping the city safe, but he didn’t give details.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti vowed to cut as much as $150 million that was part of a planned increase in the police department’s budget.

The police department in the US city of Minneapolis will be dismantled and rebuilt, city councillors said late Sunday.

“We committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community a new model of public safety that actually keeps our community safe,” Council President Lisa Bender told CNN.

Council Member Alondra Cano tweeted that the decision came through “a vetoproof majority of the MPLS City Council,” which agreed that the police department “is not reformable and that we’re going to end the current policing system”.

A white Minneapolis police officer has been charged with murder in the May 25 death of Floyd, after bystander video showed the officer’s knee pinned on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes while he pleaded for his life and called for his mother.

How have police officials responded?

Generally, police and union officials have long resisted cuts to police budgets, arguing that it would make cities less safe.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union for the city’s rank-and-file officers, said budget cuts would be the “quickest way to make our neighbourhoods more dangerous.”

“Cutting the LAPD budget means longer responses to 911 emergency calls, officers calling for backup won’t get it, and rape, murder and assault investigations won’t occur or will take forever to initiate, let alone complete,” the union’s board said in a statement last week.

“At this time, with violent crime increasing, a global pandemic and nearly a week’s worth of violence, arson, and looting, ‘defunding’ the LAPD is the most irresponsible thing anyone can propose.”

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse and Bloomberg