Front Burner - Defunding police: what it means and how it could work

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

On the weekend, a majority of the Minneapolis city council declared their intention to disband the city's police force. The move comes in response to the killing of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin — a member of that force — and to other local instances of police brutality. Today on Front Burner, we talk about the growing "defund police" movement that says scaling down police budgets and spending the money on social services could be a way to protect civilian lives.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Josh Bloch and I'm going to be hosting FrontBurner for the next few months while Jamie is away. You might have heard me here before, or maybe on the other CBC podcast I hosted, Uncover Escaping NXIVM. I'm very much looking forward to this. So, let's get started. A veto-proof majority of the MPLS City Council just publicly agreed that the Minneapolis Police Department is not reformable and that we're going to end the current policing system.

That was Minneapolis City Council member Alondra Cano on Twitter on Sunday. City Council President Lisa Bender said efforts to reform have, quote, failed. Our commitment is to end our city's toxic relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department, to end policing as we know it, and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe. The move comes as a growing chorus of people demand that cities across North America

defund their police departments. Today, what that looks like in Minneapolis and here in Canada. This is FrontBurger. In a few minutes, I'm going to talk to author Robin Menard about defunding Canadian police. But first, Madeline Denninger is a reporter with the Minnesota Daily, a student-led paper there. Madeline, I want to start with the news which stemmed from a rally in Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis on Sunday evening. We are here today to begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department. What is it exactly that these nine city councilors say they want to see happen?

Sure. So they're calling to defund and dismantle, is the language that they're using, the Minneapolis Police Department. And this is something that maybe public safety and criminal justice reform advocates have talked about before. Shocking dash cam video has been released of the fatal police shooting of Philando Castile. I have to tell you, I do have a firearm on me. Don't reach for it then. Don't pull it out. Don't pull it out. The jury acquitted him of all charges after five days of deliberations.

My son was murdered. The system really is wrong and they really failed us. But it's never really been something that at least certainly nine city council members have really talked about and certainly called for. So that's pretty new and quite notable that we have this group of council members calling for that. It's not entirely kind of fleshed out what defunding and dismantling means. And certainly it's not something that we've seen a lot in U.S. cities. People point to Camden, New Jersey as kind of a model for that. In 2013, the police department in Camden, New Jersey. That's kind of a model for that. In 2013, the police department in Camden, New Jersey dissolved and was rebuilt with a focus on community policing.

Every member of the Camden City Police Department, including myself, was fired. The opportunity that that really provided for us was the ability to build culture as opposed to changing it. We reduced violent crime by 46%. But it's still very kind of new territory. And so that's something that will have to be a conversation kind of looking towards the future. But I think it's kind of well accepted that defunding and dismantling doesn't mean that the city's public safety budget is $0.

But it's really kind of restructuring public safety. But it's really kind of restructuring public safety. And a lot of council members and advocates have talked about community centered approaches to public safety and very much doing away with a traditional system like the Minneapolis Police Department. So that's what they were talking about yesterday and kind of what we've been hearing since the death of George Floyd. of what we've been hearing since the death of George Floyd. We have had citizen review boards, body cameras, and a black chief. But we are still here, watching black people get murdered and tear gassed in our streets. We have never looked to the police for our safety.

You know, as news started to come out about George Floyd and how he was killed and who he was killed by, I was surprised to learn that Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed George Floyd, had 17 complaints filed against him for his conduct as a police officer. And I believe 16 of those were closed with no discipline. Sure. And I think that brings up questions of culture in MPD

and certainly that's been brought to the forefront. I think it's worth noting that a lot of the questions about culture within MPD come from the union and some of the culture within there and the figurehead Bob Kroll, who actually, after those four officers were fired from the department, came out and said that he wants to fight for their jobs, that they weren't given due process. And so I think that might help illustrate some of the ways that the union can get behind officers who are facing discipline or not. But no, I think that that kind of illustrates a frustration with the public that Derek Chauvin had these complaints and largely was not affected by them and hadn't been involved or on site with officer-involved shootings before.

And that's something that people are talking about now. So I want to ask you about what happened to the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Fry, on the weekend, in connection to this idea of dismantling the local police force. On Saturday, he turned up at a rally, and he ended up being shamed in a way that I honestly have never seen before. When he was asked the question, Yes or no, will you commit to defunding Minneapolis Police Department?

Tell me what happened there. Right. So they were in an area in northeast Minneapolis, right at Fry's home. And, you know, this had been one of several protests, but he came out and he addressed the protesters. The systemic racist system needs to be revamped. And one of the women leading the protests said. It's important that we hear this because if y'all don't know, he's up for reelection next year. And if he says no, guess what the f*** we gonna do next year? And this is where I think it can be difficult because, like I said, there's not necessarily an exact definition of defunding and dismantling yet. But essentially what Fry said was,

I do not support abolishing the Minneapolis Police Department, meaning that he does support MPD existing in some form, not completely abolishing it, right? But he said no, essentially, to their question, do you support defunding and dismantling the police department? And that did not go over well, I guess, unsurprisingly, at a rally that was quite centered around this issue and really was booed and yelled at. Right, people started yelling, go home, Jacob, shame. Go home, Jacob, go home!

Go home, Jacob, go home! Go home, Jacob, go home! And he had to walk this gauntlet, almost, of just passing hundreds, maybe thousands of protesters and kind of walk away from it. I have to agree, I'd never seen anything like that. And I think some of the photos that I saw were really striking.

Just to see the mayor of his own city kind of being yelled at like that. And yeah, it was not like anything I'd seen before. If you're asking whether I'm for massive structural reform to revise a structurally racist system, the answer is yes. If you're asking whether I will do everything possible to push back on the inherent inequities that are literally built into the architecture, the answer is yes. I'm not for abolishing the entire police department. I'll be honest about that too. I'm curious about what happens next. I mean, they've made this commitment to defund and that's, you know, obviously is getting a lot of attention. But what does it actually mean to start making that a reality? Sure. Well, it's not very simple, as it turns out.

The city's charter does require the council to fund MPD in proportion with the population. And they're obligated by what's written in city charter. And this has kind of now become the next question that the news is talking about, where in order to undo that part of the city chapter, council members must either unanimously agree with support of the mayor, which I don't see happening with some of Fry's comments, or they can take it to a public ballot, which might be more likely if that's the only way to get around the city chapter without Fry's approval. So there's that element as well. And then there's issues with arbitration of the police union's contract and how to go about dismantling a department when workers are unionized. So

it's certainly not a simple process. And there's a lot of things that need to happen before we could ever see defunding and dismantling the actual department. I know that one city councilor, Stephen Fletcher, wrote an article in Time about his support for this defunding. We have looked at ways to reform this department. We do not believe it is possible. We have met resistance at every turn when we have attempted reforms. kind of fear amongst politicians in making this move and advocating not just for defunding, but even more modest changes, just, you know, clawing back some of the budget or suggesting some redirection of funding in the past. He complained that, or he alleges that in his ward, there was a slowdown that cops would actually, because they knew he was advocating for reduction in funding for the police,

they would not respond to 911 calls in his ward at the same pace as they would in other wards. Sure. And I think this, I can't say if that necessarily, that I have confirmation that, you know, Council Member Fletcher, what he's talking about there. But I think that really does go to show that, you know, police departments are political in some aspects. You know, they're supposed to be above politics, they're law enforcement, but there are certainly political aspects at play. And especially when it comes to something so foundational in most cities as a police department, that making those big changes is going to be met with opposition from some folks. And conversations about public safety are often conversations about politics in some ways, or certainly at least conversations had by political figures. And I think that's not something that you can really avoid, especially with conversations

as kind of big as these. So I think that does really illustrate that issue. Madeline, thank you so much. Sure. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Thank you. These conversations aren't just happening in Minneapolis. They're happening all over the U.S. and here in Canada. Robin Menard has been advocating for defunding the police for a long time. She's a writer and the author of Policing Black Lives,

State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. Hi, Robin. Hi, thank you for having me. I want to ask you, you know, defunding the police is part of a longer lineage of what's called abolition, which is both about imagining that we could have a society without this kind of very violent institution force that we call policing, and imagining instead security in a vastly different way. So one aspect of that is, of course, this issue of defunding. If you look to the Toronto budget, for example, the municipal budget, we see that over a billion dollars was invested towards policing.

It's actually the largest contribution that people's property tax are going to towards by far. If you compare that about $700 that most people are paying per year from property taxes versus about 100 of that going to Toronto community housing and shelter and all other kinds of aspects of safety. So it's asking us, given that policing, particularly for Black communities, for Indigenous communities, has been such a source of violence as opposed to a protection from violence, what would it mean for us to divest from that institution and actually reinvest in, you know, community organization and many other kinds of responses that could actually keep our communities safe. So I want to ask you, I mean, what in practical terms, what are some of the ways that you would propose filling in or replacing the work that police currently do? How else and who else could do that? Sure. I mean, so just to give a little bit of background to that question right now, even if we look to the most recent Statistics Canada analysis, there's an estimate there that about 50 to 80% of calls that police respond to are not even criminal in nature.

It's about things like disturbances, domestic disputes, things to do with drug overdoses and mental health-related calls. And those are all issues in which policing really has no valuable service. We know that for Black communities in particular, the police response to mental health crises has been deadly. If we look to the CBC study over the last 20 years, we see that over 70% of people killed by the police across Canada have been in a mental health crisis. So if we think about the $15 billion across Canada that's spent on policing or the over a billion dollars in Toronto, we can think about what would it mean to instead invest in things like crisis de-escalation workers, like community-led anti-violence initiatives, like safe beds for people who

are experiencing alcohol and other kinds of intoxication, for free housing as opposed to, you know, continually having the police evicting homeless people, for example, from encampments like we're seeing right now, you know, investing in free public transit instead of, you know, funding transit enforcement that again, is often a site of violence for racialized communities. So it's really about, you know, thinking about actually investing in people's safety at the core of where those inequalities arise, as opposed to investing in repression. We're working on an episode for later this week about DeAndre Campbell, who was a young black man in the Peel region of Ontario.

And his parents say that he was schizophrenic and that he called 911 for help. The police arrived and found DeAndre in the kitchen holding a knife. After a brief encounter, the officers shocked DeAndre with their tasers. Moments later, one of the officers shot him dead. They shouldn't be going to a house with mental issue with guns. For what? They're going to fight a war? They're not going to war. They're going to kill. It's being investigated by the province's police watchdog. And I want to ask you, how could his call have been dealt with instead? Under the kind of things that you're proposing,

where might that 911 call have led? You know, there's been many community discussions about what it would mean to have rapid response, mental health de-escalation. You know, people who were trained in mental health crises but who were not armed. Because we need to understand that, of course, these escalations continually do result in people's death.

And even in those situations where they don't, and I can really even turn to my own experience as a community outreach worker, people's fear of the police in their home or wherever they are is often something that can make the situation vastly more difficult. So investing actually in a non-carceral, a non-violent response to mental health crises that are community-led and based in community knowledge. I think that's something that's very possible and something that would absolutely be life-saving. Now, one of the criticisms that you hear about this idea, especially from people who aren't Black or Indigenous, is this question of safety. So, you know, we're talking about, sure, with mental health, you might have mental health workers that can come and de-escalate a situation and are trained specifically to deal with that kind of issue. and are trained specifically to deal with that kind of issue. But what about in the case of a homicide or a violent situation, a mass shooting,

something that really does require someone to intervene in a physical way? I mean, I don't think that anybody is saying that we don't need some kind of rapid response for those kinds of like quite rare as far as statistically as far as crime goes, as far as what most policing is, that we don't need some kind of rapid response for those kinds of like quite rare as far as statistically as far as crime goes as far as what most policing is that we don't need some kind of rapid response in terms of times of acute violence but we need to understand that most of what people imagine policing is really is the criminalization of poverty really is the criminalization of mental health really is you know responses to you know to drug related issues so I think that it's just this vast misunderstanding that most of policing is not really that idea of going after that textbook, you know, mass murderer, right? It really largely, fundamentally within its role in society is, you know, the repression of people who do absolutely require support, and policing is

not that kind of support, right? So even under that kind of abolition umbrella, there still is a place for something that looks like a police officer that we have today, but they are part of a slate of services that could be provided to address people in crisis. Yeah, I just think that there are so many kinds of crises that do not need to be met, you know, with anybody with arms that really is possible for us to imagine, you know, a police, a police free future. That's, that's something that we could really imagine within our lifetimes that there are, you know, even if we don't have all the answers and I will not pretend to have all of them today, we have so many different alternatives that have been neglected, that have been defunded,

that have never even gotten their start because of this ongoing, you know, budgetary support for and social belief in policing and cages and more and more policing and more and more roles for policing and more and more funding for policing as the solution, you know, to racial and social inequalities. If this idea moves forward, it's going to take a lot of support. And I wonder what you're seeing right now in Canada. Are you seeing the kind of support that would actually lead to something like this being passed? I think that we're at a time, you know, where we're seeing

a new horizon of possibility. It was extremely difficult to raise these kinds of questions in the media, in the broader media. And it has been, you know, for years, even as we know that police killings have only intensified and grown in scale and scope over the last 20 years, even as we know that police killings have only intensified and grown in scale and scope over the last 20 years, even as Black communities have been continuously protesting against police killings. But now we're really beginning to see, I think, some public space being opened for us, not only to talk about divesting from policing and reinvesting that money in communities, which I think is extremely valuable and something that we should have gotten to a long time ago, but even really questioning the nature of policing itself.

Well, and it's interesting that we're seeing politicians at various levels of government, Liberal MP Adam Vaughan voiced support on Twitter for defunding the police. We have two Toronto City Councillors, Josh Matlow and Kristen Wong-Tam, said they're going to put forward a motion to reduce Toronto's police budget by 10%. That's more than $120 million that he says could be used to support community resources. Maybe we don't need police to do certain tasks and where there might be alternatives to policing that might be able to de-escalate a situation better

than having somebody with a uniform and a gun. And in Ottawa too, there was a city councillor, Sean Maynard, has also called for diverting a big part of the city's police budget to other services like mental health supports. So it's interesting to see that just within this week, we're seeing politicians come forward supporting this idea. Absolutely. And, you know, we're seeing significant wins, not only in the idea, but across North America. You know, you know, we're seeing significant wins not only in the

idea, but across North America. You know, you can look to the police budget of L.A., where we saw that there was a divestment of over $100 million from policing and then redirecting that towards communities. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced his proposal. Budgets are moral documents. And we knew in COVID-19 that we would have to make cuts almost everywhere. So I want to be very clear with my police officers, anybody else listening, this is shared sacrifice. You know, the dissolution of the Minneapolis police force, the dismantling rather. These are really valuable and innovative changes that are really showing us that not only is it necessary, absolutely necessary, but it's entirely possible. Of course, there's also a lot of pushback to this idea. I know that

even prior to the protests that we've been seeing over the last couple of weeks, the Vancouver Police Department rejected a motion by city council to cut the police budget by just 1% in response to some of the fiscal pressures from COVID-19. And the Vancouver Police Department said it went against the province's Police Act. And that's just one example of kind of pushback that there is when there are motions put forward to reduce police budgets. How difficult is it going to be to actually make this kind of thing happen when you actually are looking at concrete proposals to reduce funding to police? So of course, there's very, you know, strong political power behind, particularly behind the police unions across Canadian cities that makes this incredibly difficult. But at the same time, you know, we need to remember that Black and

Indigenous people who are living in this country, you know, we're also supposed to be, in some imagination, the constituents of this place, right?, we're also supposed to be, in some imagination, the constituents of this place, right? So what does it mean to condemn certain people to expendability and disposability just because of a lack of political will to make the kinds of changes that are just absolutely necessary for other people's survival? On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he wants body cameras for the RCMP, which accounts for 20,000 police officers in this country. The commissioner assured me that she will use all available tools to take quick, solid action. I'm committing to raising this with the provinces this week so we can move forward as quickly as possible.

This evening, the RCMP said it will begin to introduce body cameras for some officers. Which I suppose could actually mean spending more money. Do you see that as an adequate response? I think that particularly in the time when there are so many calls across North America towards defunding, this notion that somehow throwing more money at the situation, throwing another technology, throwing in some ways a surveillance technology at the problem, I think that that's really not getting to the root of the issue. It's not addressing the kind of egregious structural and anti-Black violence that we see, that people are demanding be overturned, right? That this is not, that body cams are not going to end racism and

policing. There are different studies that point to different levels of effectivity, but there is no study that's demonstrated so far, as far as places where body cams have been instituted, that body cams are ending the reality of the violent policing of Black communities, of the violent policing of Indigenous communities. I'm interested in this moment that we're in right now, just how much public opinion seems to have shifted around this question. You've been advocating for the abolition of the police for a long time. And I think until very recently, many people considered that a radical idea. And I wonder for you, what is it like now to be seeing this conversation happening amongst politicians in many media outlets?

I mean, even I saw on Fox News that this conversation was happening there as well. Everybody can talk about and wax romantic about the movement and how we need systemic change because it means nothing until they get to your door. What's it like to see it being debated so widely now? I think that it's something that is really exciting when we see, you know, something that for Black communities has been such a staunch reality, like understanding that what is called public safety for some white Canadians, for us, is itself a source of unsafety. To have that reality confirmed in some ways in the public realm is something that is profoundly validating because it's been an ongoing reality for generations and black communities have been addressing the idea that policing itself is a kind of violence for generations. So now that we're finally getting to the point where we're talking about not only tinkering with policing, but really fundamentally rethinking the necessity of this institution,

I think that that really speaks to the labor, the intellectual labor, the physical labor of all the generations before ours that have gotten us to here. Because nothing comes out of nowhere and no idea is born. You know, this idea was not born two weeks ago. Well, and so, but what do you think it is about this particular moment that allowed for that kind of tipping point where the conversation is now spreading across communities? I think that the injustices that we have all been experiencing

really and trying to address over the past generations, the pandemic is really laying and exposing the fault lines of that in a vastly more extreme way, right? And I think that that is part of what is making this, you know, this protest movement so incredibly powerful. We're seeing numbers, you know, that are just absolutely massive. A recent study found in counties in the U.S. with the highest proportions of Black

Americans represented more than half of all COVID-19 cases and deaths. As of mid-April, there were over 283,000 coronavirus cases in disproportionately Black counties. And I think it's really because it's bringing to the forefront like which people are expendable in a broader sense. We know that Black people have also been, you know, vastly overexposed and in the US and the UK and in Toronto neighborhoods as well are being infected with the coronavirus at rates that are vastly higher than the other populations, working on the front line as so-called essential workers who are in many ways disposable workers, right?

Making minimum wage, you know, being left again to fend off COVID-19 exposure with few protections. So we see just the broadened inequalities of the present that were already there, I think, are magnified at this time. And we're seeing a rejection of those fault lines and a demand for something new, for something transformatively different. Robin, thank you so much for speaking with me. Thank you. Before we go today, Democrats in Washington introduced a massive legislative package Monday that would overhaul police oversight and procedures in the U.S. According to an early draft, the Justice in

Policing Act would ban chokeholds, create a database of excessive force incidents from across the country, and limit the legal protections afforded police. Before presenting the proposed legislation, House and Senate Democrats kneeled in silence for 8 minutes and 48 seconds. The length of time prosecutors say the officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of the handcuffed George Floyd before he died. That's it for today. I'm Josh Bloch. Thanks for listening to FrontBurk. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.