Does Anyone Know What “Defund the Police” Really Means?

In cities across the country, it has been a summer of continuous protests, many of which have escalated to riots, arson, and looting. The protesters chant to defund the police, but as many of the protests have turned violent, police departments in affected cities have been overwhelmed with calls for assistance.  

So should protesters’ demands to “defund the police” be taken literally?  I spent some time looking into what proposals to “defund the police” actually entail, though I often wonder if protesters themselves know what their goals are. There definitely seems to be a divide between media and think tank commenters on the one hand, and the protesters in cities on the other.  

Consider a June 19 report from Brookings Institute. According to this Report, “defund the police” technically just means “reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies funded by the local municipality. That’s it. It’s that simple.” Similarly, for The Cut, Amanda Arnold writes:

“Defunding the police does not necessarily mean getting rid of the police altogether. Rather, it would mean reducing police budgets and reallocating those funds to crucial and oft-neglected areas like education, public health, housing, and youth services.”

OK, that doesn’t sound totally unreasonable, and might even have merit.  But based on what we’re seeing on the ground in several cities, that sounds more and more like an apologist’s explanation for an out-of-control radical movement. In an Atlantic article on June 14, Andrew Ferguson described an interaction between Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and a protester in his hometown who asked him, “Will you defund the Minneapolis Police Department?” To which Frey replied: “I do not support full abolition of the police department.” The protester’s response: “All right, then get the fuck out of here.” 

And by all indications, protesters don’t just want to reduce police funding; in many cases they mean to do the police physical harm. Such indications include frequent chants of “kill a cop, save a life,” and “all cops are bastards!” In several cities, protesters have burned police precincts and thrown molotov cocktails at police vehicles. In Portland, police reported that protesters pelted them with “fireworks and flaming trash.” Also in Portland, three federal officers were likely left permanently blinded when rioters pointed lasers in their eyes. The evidence suggests that large numbers of protesters do, very much, want to entirely eliminate the police departments in their cities.

Meanwhile, other people are taking advantage of diminished law enforcement presence to loot private businesses. In Chicago, for example, there have been many episodes of looting on Michigan Avenue. As the Manhattan Contrarian previously reported, BLM activists have openly supported the lootings. WBEZ, NPR’s news source in Chicago, also interviewed BLM activist Ariel Atkins. “What do you think about Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s comments [condemning] the looting?” WBEZ asked. Atkins responded:

“This is the same woman who literally said, ‘Well, I haven’t heard anybody in real life say defund the police’ when you go to her block and there are people that literally have signs in their window that say defund the police, when people are literally protesting outside of her house every day screaming defund the police, and then when they’re protesting outside of her office.”

Personally, I would have thought that protesters would see Lori Lightfoot as on their side. The new Mayor is a progressive Democrat, is black herself, and is a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Her twitter shows that she considers herself to be an ally of the BLM movement. She is also the former President of the Chicago Police Board and Police Accountability Task Force from 2015-2018, during which she filed a report “critical of the Chicago Police Department’s practices, and specifically the police union’s ‘code of silence.’” (A link to that report here). Just this month, she has called for “sweeping changes to agreements with police unions in order to allow officers to be held accountable for misconduct.” This is similar in essence to what pundits say the “Defund the Police” movement is really about.

Yet protesters have been rioting outside her home and threatening her safety. These threats became so intense that she decided she needed to ban demonstrators from the block where she lives. She defended that ban, and the police enforcement of it, saying “I have a right to make sure that my home is secure.” [my emphasis]

And she’s correct — but then, don’t we all have that right? The critical role law enforcement plays in society is to protect our personal safety and private property. Those protections are essential to the social contract we make where we live. What BLM activists fail to understand is that when looting of downtown Chicago becomes acceptable, that contract is fundamentally violated. Here is Ariel Atkins's defense of the looting: 

“They’re like, ‘Oh, you support the looters.’ And yeah, we do, 100%. That’s reparations… I feel like these stores, these Macy’s, these Guccis, the PNC Banks, they’re not here for us. The city puts way more money and investment into spending time and protecting their spaces and making sure that they exist.” 

What Atkins doesn’t seem to get is that the Macy’s and Gucci’s et al. arrangement with Chicago is entirely voluntary: stores such as these will come and invest in the Chicago community as long as there is sufficient reason for them to do so - i.e., customers to buy their products, and some reasonable assurance that their property will be protected from theft or destruction. This is not just true of conglomerates; it’s also true of all small businesses and individual entrepreneurs. Chicago is incentivized to provide those protections in exchange for the opportunities these stores offer to residents, both in terms of jobs and products. It’s a reciprocal relationship, one intended to be mutually beneficial. To borrow a quote from Brookings: “That’s it. It’s that simple.”

What happens to cities that lack investment by private businesses and citizens? This link will take you to Kim Klacik’s answer; she’s the Republican candidate for congress from Baltimore. In other cities, we’re getting a hint of the answer to that question this summer. Lockdowns have all but eliminated the restaurants, arts, and culture that make city life worth living. The absence of civil society, and the addition of protests and looting, have exposed the dangers of living in densely populated areas. Shootings are way up in cities like Chicago and New York. This Monday, the Chicago Sun Times reported that Chicago had had 66 shootings over the weekend, and three of those injured were teenagers.

On August 17, the Portland police department reported that dozens of calls for help were going unanswered as their police force remained under siege. Many calls placed were in response to the protests taking place, such as vandalism and theft, but several also included help for violation of restraining orders and harassment. Since the pandemic, Chicago Police reported a spike in the number of domestic violence calls for service. With city police departments otherwise occupied, how many calls for help are currently going unanswered?

A neighbor in my building in Queens sent me an article from our neighborhood newspaper, the Sunnyside Post, reporting that residents of the adjacent Long Island City neighborhood “were hiring private security guards to combat crime on the Hunters Point Waterfront.” 

“What do you think of this?” My neighbor asked me. I responded that I am completely open to the idea of privatized security, but can also plainly see the vacuum that would be left in the absence of public, tax-payer funded law enforcement. Affluent citizens that have the resources to pay for both their taxes and private services will have access to free-market solutions when the public option fails them. I would not be surprised to see expansion of private security in many areas of New York City, to protect fancy department stores, office buildings, and wealthy individuals. In a way, this is actually very similar to public school closures, in the sense that many more poor children will be left behind by those closures than their affluent counterparts, whose parents will fill in the gaps in their education with private tutoring.

If protesters receive their wish to abolish the police, the people most affected will be those we consider to be the most vulnerable in our society: low income families, particularly women and children, and minorities. That is, it will be the people who cannot afford another option. It is no exaggeration to say that we are currently watching the radical left destroy the lives of the people it claims to advocate for — exacerbating inequality in the process.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said it best when she said she has the right to make sure her home is secure. We all do. Let’s make that the goal.