-The police killing of George Floyd
has sparked nationwide protests over policing.
Amid these protests,
a rallying cry for some has gained traction --
Defund the Police.
You might think defunding the police
means stripping police of all funding
and eliminating police departments completely,
but it doesn't.
-This is not about flipping some magic switch and -- poof --
all police just disappear.
This is about an evidence-based driven strategy
to produce better public safety
by trying to get the police out of those things
that they're not really properly equipped to handle.
They shouldn't be responding to mental health crisis calls.
They shouldn't be responsible for discipline in our schools.
They shouldn't be harassing the homeless.
-Activists argue that if the movement is adopted,
it will lead to safer communities
because the millions of dollars spent on police departments
will be directed to community programs.
-And the millions and billions and trillions that we waste
on the military and the police need to go to our communities.
We need housing.
We need education.
We need healthcare.
-So, there's an assumption that the only possible tool
we can use to keep people safe
is armed police patrolling our neighborhoods.
When we look at wealthy communities, though,
we don't see a lot of armed police
because those communities have access
to high-quality healthcare
to deal with problems of mental health
crises and substance abuse.
But we turned all those problems over to police in poor
and non-white communities.
Those communities don't want more police.
They want high-quality medically-based
drug treatment programs.
They want high-quality mental health services
for their family members.
-Critics of Defund the Police aren't so sure
that reallocating funds is a good idea.
-The President is appalled by the Defund the Police movement.
-There won't be defunding.
There won't be dismantling of our police.
-This is rolling the protective layers that protect Americans
in their homes and in their places of business.
-In your experience, every time someone calls 911,
would a therapist or a medic be sufficient,
or sometimes do people need cops?
-I'm quite unclear how a medic is gonna help
with an armed subject who's assaulting his wife
in a domestic violence situation or elsewhere.
-Many critics' first response to abolishing the police is,
"But how will I be safe if I have a real emergency
and need the police?"
-There's a lot of misconception
about what we're talking about here.
Police exist.
We're talking about pulling as many things away from them
as we can show could be handled in a better way.
And the goal of his movement is to prevent harms
from happening in the first place.
I think we have a real political crisis in our country
where there's a division between people who think
that it's actually possible
to make the lives of the poor and the isolated better,
and those people who think that the only thing
those people understand is the threat of guns
and putting them in cages.
And at root, I think that latter philosophy about life is tinged
with a certain kind of racism that says that certain people
just aren't capable of managing their own affairs.
-Well, I think that one of the things
that's really being asked for
is not for policing to go away or for police to disappear,
but for policing to be equitable.
Black and white people have experienced
policing entirely different.
-As politicians have come to rely on police
to address more and more problems in our society,
they've given those police more military-grade hardware
and told them they're waging a war on drugs
and a war on gangs
and a war on immigrants and a war on terror,
and really, a war on the poor.
And this military-grade equipment is not helping.
It signals that the police
are evermore distant from the public,
it's being misused on things like no-knock drug raids
in the middle of the night, and the suppression of lawful
First Amendment protest activity.
-Politicians on both sides of the aisle
have avoided committing to defunding the police.
-No, I don't support defunding the police.
I support conditioning federal aid to police
based on whether or not they meet certain
basic standards of decency and honorableness.
-And it only perpetuates the problem more.
We should be providing more money to training.
-House leadership recently unveiled
a sprawling new police reform bill
called the Justice and Policing Act.
And while it does a lot
to financially motivate police departments,
it stops short of answering calls to defund the police.
-We've seen a growing number of cities in the midst
of this crisis beginning to take seriously the demands
to shift resources from jails, courts,
and police into community-identified needs.
And I think we're just gonna see these movements get stronger,
especially as they begin the hard work
of talking to their neighbors, building alternatives,
and convincing the people in their communities
that they have a better strategy for producing public safety.