Have Americans warmed to calls to ‘defund the police’?

Just over a month ago, the term “defund the police” was almost entirely the domain of activists and academics. Now it’s a household phrase, with a huge majority of Americans telling pollsters they recognize it.

But what exactly does it mean? And when Americans hear it, what do they think of? For proponents of police reform, is it a useful slogan — or dangerously alienating? In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in late May at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, calls to sharply cut police funding appeared potentially radioactive. Beyond some highprofile progressive figures, including a number of young politicians of color, few leading Democrats embraced the term.

Joe Biden, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, staked out his position last month: “I do not support defunding police,” he wrote in a USA Today op-ed article, pushing a range of reforms instead.

But as people have learned more about the term and some city governments have even put it into action, Americans have shown some receptiveness to it. Recent polling suggests many Americans now understand the phrase as a call not to simply eliminate the keepers of the peace, but to reinvest a portion of their funding in other programs and crime prevention techniques.

Running for Congress in New York, Mondaire Jones, a progressive political newcomer, articulated that vi- sion last month when he en- dorsed“de funding police and reinvesting this money in health, education and alternatives to incarceration.”

Pollsters at PerryUndem, a public opinion research firm, have been studying the public’s response to the protests, and they said they had found voters more curious about than dismissive of the term.

Polls have consistently shown that an overwhelming share of Americans see racism as a big problem in the country, and that a slimmer but still-strong majority view Floyd’s death as part of a systemic problem with policing in America. In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll last month, 74% of Americans said “police violence against the public” was a problem, with 42% calling it a major one.

Councils in cities across the country have committed over the past month to reducing funding for police departments. In New York, the city council passed a budget this week that shifts $1 billion away from the police department. And the very fact city leaders felt compelled to say they were removing funding from the department marked a huge political shift.

Jawanza James Williams, director of organizing for Vocal-NY, which has been instrumental in the push to defund the New York City Police Department, said organizers were seeking to ensure that calls to defund the police were always understood in tandem with calls to reinvest in other aspects of city government.

“I’m sure ‘abolishing slavery’ was toxic at the time, for most people in the country,” Williams said. “The work is to help people understand the depth of the ‘defund’ framework, and to inform that with other factors.”