Minneapolis City Council members announced Sunday that they plan to dismantle the police force in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
WASHINGTON — A movement to slash funding for police departments or to disband them entirely has surged in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis police custody last month, with activists, local leaders and elected officials calling to drastically reshape public safety amid nationwide protests of police brutality.
Demonstrators have chanted “defund the police” at rallies outside the homes of mayors, and they have printed the slogan on face masks and spray-painted it on walls in numerous cities. In the District of Columbia, the phrase now appears in huge yellow letters on the newly named Black Lives Matter Plaza on 16th Street Northwest near the White House.
Though long a concept floated among left-leaning activists and academics, officials from Washington to Los Angeles are now seriously considering ways to scale back their police departments and redirect funding to social programs. The moves would be a strong show of solidarity with protesters, who are clamoring for social justice and to strike back at what they see as an oppressive force across the country.
On Sunday, nine members of the Minneapolis City Council announced that they were seeking to dismantle the city’s police department after white officer Derek Chauvin was filmed kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes on May 25 as the 46-year-old black man gasped for breath and pleaded for help.
Congress, too, is feeling the pressure, and Democrats on Monday are expected to release a sweeping reform package aimed at curbing excessive force.
Officials face a politically fraught decision about how to respond, weighing whether to stand with protesters who are demanding an extreme overhaul at the risk of jeopardizing public safety and taking authority away from police officers in communities that have sought more protection against violent crime.
The tension was on display last week in Minneapolis, where racial justice advocates confronted Mayor Jacob Frey in front of a mass of protesters, asking if he would commit to defunding the police department.
“It is a yes or no,” an organizer with a microphone demanded. “And if he says no, guess what the (expletive) we’re going to do next year,” she told the crowd, noting that Frey was up for reelection in 2021.
“I do not support the full abolition of the police,” said Frey, a Democrat.
The crowd issued a volley of boos and chanted: “Go home, Jacob, go home!” and “Shame!” Frey walked away from the scene alone.
Proponents of police defunding say policy changes alone are not enough – and have not worked in the past. They say leaders must make changes that reduce reliance on officers and reallocate money spent on law enforcement to black communities for services such as schools, health care and housing.
“When we talk about defunding the police, what we’re saying is, invest in the resources that our communities need,” Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “So much of policing right now is generated and directed towards quality-of-life issues,” she said. “What we do need is increased funding for housing, we need increased funding for education, we need increased funding for the quality of life of communities who are over-policed and over-surveilled.”
A 2017 book, “The End of Policing” by Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College, has become something of a manual for how such efforts might work.
