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As the George Floyd protests continue to move forward, demonstrators are now asking to defund the police.
John and Ken are almost positive, they have no idea what that actually means. So let us break it down for you.
The movement to defund the police seems simple on paper. It would mean taking away funding from police departments across the country. In most cases, a city's or county's legislators are in charge of determining how much of their yearly budget will go to funding police departments.
However, there's another push when people say let's defund the police and it's more than just taking money away. They want to take those funds away and have them be used into social programs.
The larger push to defund the police is about more than taking money away. It's a push to reallocate those funds into social programs.
"It’s not just about taking away money from the police, it’s about reinvesting those dollars into black communities. Communities that have been deeply divested from, communities that, some have never felt the impact of having true resources. And so we have to reconsider what we’re resourcing. I've been saying we have an economy of punishment over an economy of care," Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement said.
Christy E. Lopez, a Georgetown Law professor explained that defunding the police is not necessarily something that comes overnight and taking money away from the department wouldn't actually solve the problem at hand.
"Defunding the police means shrinking the scope of police responsibilities and shifting most of what government does to keep us safe to entities that are better equipped to meet that need," Lopez wrote
People against the defund movement expressed actual concerns that it would lead to increased crime in neighborhoods making the situation even worse than it already is.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the city's police union, said budget cuts would be the “quickest way to make our neighborhoods 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.
So next time you say defund the police, be sure you know what you're actually asking for
To read the full explanation, please read here.