What I Mean When I Say Defund the Police
The phrase “defund the police” is a misnomer that causes many people (particularly older, middle-to-upper class whites) to have a negative knee-jerk reaction before they even consider what is being proposed. The problem is clearly with the word “defund,” which comes with a series of onerous connotations. But this movement isn’t about punishing or enacting vengeance on cops — no one’s asking them to hold bake sales for bullets or anything like that.
A better word choice than “defund” would be to “reform,” which gets closer to the truth of what this movement is all about. It’s about making sensible cuts to bloated police budgets and re-appropriating those funds toward education, housing, and other vital social services that we as a country have allowed to lie fallow over the past several decades. It’s about de-militarizing the police in order to eliminate, or at least temper, the hyperaggressive, us vs. them mentality many cops have towards citizens (particularly black ones), and also because there’s no earthly fucking need for a precinct in some podunk town Wisconsin or wherever to be all geared up like they’re in some Call of Duty simulation.
The Minneapolis city council’s vote to disband the police probably sounds like some far-left Chomskyesque nightmare to those who seem to imagine “defunding” the police will lead to instantaneous anarchy and lawlessness. But I see the problem a different way: if we don’t institute serious reform now — after all that we’ve born witness to since the Floyd protests began — then the tensions between police and the people will only escalate further. Because this problem, this tension, is not going to dissipate, can only at best be squished and tamped down. But the tension will still there, needing to be released, one way or another.
I’m not naïve enough to think that the defund/reform the police experiment will proceed perfectly. Of course there will be some slips, some stumbles — and with each faltering step, the critics will step in to say that the old ways are best. But this is a lie. All the half measures and mild reforms I’ve seen over my lifetime have availed us little besides the appearance of solving the problem. Or to say it a different way: you can only apply so many coats of spackle to old drywall before it becomes abundantly clear that the whole thing has to be removed.
And woe to the craftsman — be he the mayor, governor, or presidential candidate — who says otherwise.
Please sign the petition at http://chng.it/ZGt4fsYLvS.
