What does ‘defund police’ really mean?

The nationwide calls to “defund the police” in the wake of the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis embody both the anger at continuing gratuitous police violence and a strategy for dealing with it.

But do defunders want to constrain police, replace them, reimagine them or simply abolish them? Not everyone who uses the slogan agrees on the details. For now, though, here are some things that “defund the police” is not:

• It’s not new: One of the leading strategies to encourage better police behavior over the last 40 years has been investments in technology to pinpoint public safety problems and enable more humane, community-oriented law enforcement rather than occupation-style policing. But more surveillance and more cops can mean more oppression rather than safer streets.

In the midst of the crack epidemic that began in the 1980s, the most succinct articulation of the dissatisfaction with the state of policing in black neighborhoods came not from street marchers or reformers but from the

1988 N.W.A. album “Straight Outta Compton.” The group outlined complaints against not just policing but the inequitable economic and social structure of which it is a part. With minor editing it could have been the executive summary of a blue-ribbon commission report explaining how mistaken it was to spend money on greater police presence rather than on better health, education and employment opportunities. That was 32 years ago.

• It’s not a panacea. The Marshall Project has reported at length on the continuing problems in Chicago and Memphis, which cut police budgets but did not reduce excessive force or improve the community’s regard for officers. Smaller forces meant larger backlogs of unsolved crimes and longer wait times for police response.

That experience is at the core of the fear voiced by critics of “defund the police”: What do you do when you need a cop? Defunders answer that many times help can be best be provided by a mental health professional, not an armed officer who may be as likely to exacerbate the situation as resolve it. But still — sometimes you need a cop.

• It’s not what happened in Camden, N.J. That city had a police department beset by deep corruption, so it was disbanded and replaced by a new agency. The move could best be seen as a “reset” rather than a full-scale defunding.

Nor is “defund the police” N.W.A.’s Compton, Calif., which disbanded its department in 2000 but replaced it with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which had its own problems. Other cities, too, have had police do-overs, including Stockton, Calif., where municipal bankruptcy meant layoffs and early retirements that paved the way for more constructive thinking and practices. Stockton, though, remains one of California’s most violent cities.

• It’s not “reform.”

The “defund the police” movement critiques traditional reforms such as body cams, oversight commissions, better training and more restrictive use-of-force policies. Defunders note that these things have been tried, but police killings, especially of black people, continue.

Some backers of reforms have apologized for distracting attention from the more radical defunding campaign. Police reform legislation is in the works in Washington, and many Americans support the idea — perhaps because they see it as a more comfortable approach than defunding or abolishing police agencies.

• It’s not crazy. Transferring funding from armed law enforcement to other first responders is not, in and of itself, insane. Even many police would agree that they are the wrong people to deal with mental health crises or Metro fare-evaders. Defunding police does not mean defunding public safety. But at its best it should mean reconsidering the most effective means to attain public safety, how much it should cost, who should pay the freight, and who should do the job.