The Daily - The Case For Defunding the Police

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

This episode contains strong language.Several major U.S. cities are proposing ways to defund and even dismantle their police departments. But what would that actually look like? Guest: John Eligon, a national correspondent covering race for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: In protests across the country, pleas for changes in policing have ranged from reform to abolition. Some proposed measures include restricting police use of military-style equipment and requiring officers to face strict discipline in cases of misconduct.Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council — a veto-proof majority — pledged to dismantle the city’s Police Department, promising to create a new system of public safety.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, several major U.S. cities are now proposing ways to defund and even dismantle their police departments. John Eligo on the thinking behind those plans and what they might look like in practice. It's Tuesday, June 9th. I can't breathe! I can't breathe! In the early days of the protests, after George Floyd was killed, it was just pure emotions and raw rage. But pretty soon, once the more fiery protests and fiery unrest died down, then we started seeing the organizers come in and talking about what they want.

And one thing we quickly saw were these face masks that people were wearing. They were black and they had yellow writing on them and they said, defund police. And from there, you start hearing these calls at protests, at rallies. Defund the police! You start hearing defund the police.

Defund the police! Defund the police! Defund the police! You start hearing, defund the police. Defund the police! Defund the police! Defund the police! You start hearing calls to abolish the police. You start seeing people waving signs, and it became clear that this was an opening that a lot of activists saw to take this moment of a very brutal police killing

and turn it into something much larger. Do the right thing! Defund the police! killing and turn it into something much larger. So John, what do these concepts, defund, dismantle, abolish the police, what exactly do they mean? To defund, when activists say that, what they mean is taking money away from the police department's budget and redirect it toward other things, whether that be social services agencies, maybe mental health agencies that can do functions that police are often called on to do. But if you fully defund it, you can get to a space where the police department is abolished. And so essentially what that means is that there is no more police department as we know it. You don't call these men and women in blue shirts to come racing to your door with their guns in hand. It means that they have to figure out some other form of providing that public

safety and the police department would not be that form. And where do these concepts come from? would not be that form. And where do these concepts come from? Well, at their core, they come from the problems and issues that especially communities of color, especially Black communities have had with policing. They see police coming into their communities to brutalize them, not to protect and serve them. And that has really influenced this desire to keep the police away, to do something else. And we've seen basically that governments and police forces, they respond with certain reforms.

We've seen efforts for body cameras. We've seen diversifying the police departments. We've seen changes to the rules on use of force. changes to the rules on use of force. But what became clear to a lot of today's activists and what they say explicitly is that these reforms are not working. If you look at since Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri six years ago, the police have continued to kill people at higher rates and especially black people at disproportionately higher rates. And so for them, the only solution is to tear it down and build something new. So John, what might it actually look like in practice to defund or

abolish a police department? So for instance, if someone is homeless and they're struggling on the streets, a person can call 911. And instead of an armed police officer being sent out, perhaps there can be an outreach worker from a homeless services agency. Or if you have someone having a mental health episode, then again, you can call 911, and instead of a police officer, maybe a healthcare worker,

a mental health worker will come out. And the idea behind it is to really cut down the interactions between armed police officers and civilians. And by doing that, the hope is that it will reduce the conflict and the potential for people getting hurt or killed by police officers. Right. I mean, that makes a certain sense, especially for a community where there's not a lot of violent crime. But every community is different, right? And some towns, some cities,

I think about New York City, for example, have a significantly higher rate of violent crime that would seem to require having armed police. So how do activists think about that? For a lot of the activists that I spoke to, the issue was about centering public safety on communities. And one activist that I spoke to, Ariana Nason, she said essentially it's going to be up to each community to decide what public safety looks like for itself. It's going to be

up to every community to decide what they need. We can't decide that. So maybe that's armed patrols. Maybe that's mental health workers. Maybe that's some sort of mobile units with social workers sitting in it and people who are trained and using force and different things.

You know, one of the big ideas is this idea of community policing, community watch. And it's interesting. I said, isn't an issue, though, with community policing or community patrols, Neighborhood Watch, that if I walk into that community as a black man with dreadlocks, if I walk into one of these communities, we see what happens with Neighborhood Watch. We see Trayvon Martin. We see Ahmaud Arbery.

Should that be a concern, then, guess with this community type based model that like certain people who look a certain way might go into a neighborhood and that community might decide to take it into their own hands and then take it overboard, I guess. And she took off her sunglasses. She looked at me and she said, No, I get that. And I'll be really real with you. For me personally, I don't have all the answers for that either. I don't. And I wish I did. A lot of it is... Honestly, I don't really know the answer to that right now. She was not sure exactly what the answer was.

And see, this is all to say it's still very tricky and very much a work in progress. But what she did say is that the current system also is not working for me either. So it's a matter of what are they going to do differently? And they believe that something drastically different needs to be done. As best you can tell, would any of the familiar elements of an existing police department, I'm thinking for the sake of argument, homicide detectives, special victims units that investigate sexual assaults or rape. Do those remain? Do they take a different form?

Do they adopt a different name? Has that been fleshed out? I would say no, it's not been fleshed out because, again, we go back to the fact that this is not going to be some federal commission or even state commission or city commission for anywhere that's going to come up with like, these are the rules for like public safety now. And these are all things that need to be worked out.

And I think what people say with things like homicide investigations, with sex crimes investigations and things like that, they say a couple of things. One, the police are not doing a good job at those anyways. So you have lots of cities where the clearance rate on homicides and other investigations is miserable. You had even here in Minneapolis, there was a big kind of scandal with all the rape kits that they had untested. So they had a lot of

issues with crimes that were not being investigated properly. And then the second thing that people say is that those jobs can be taken up by specialized, trained people. You can build new institutions to do those things that aren't necessarily policing. I did talk to one council member who said maybe there's still police, but for a very, very limited role. And many of their responsibilities are farmed out. You know, anything short of some sort of act of violence, you don't need police for. So in some people's eyes, that would still be a police force. But one thing, the people who are most ardent about abolishing the police or defunding the police even, they make it clear that they don't just want a system in which it's police in another name, police with another uniform on.

it's police in another name, police with another uniform on. And these demands to defund the police, they've actually been brewing in Minneapolis for several years now, ever since the police killing back in 2015. There's been several local activist groups working on it. And those activist groups came together this past weekend in what was probably the biggest and most clearest demand for defunding the police. We'll be right back. Forrest M. Peevee! So there were hundreds of activists who went and gathered in front of the mayor, Jacob Fry's house. And they had megaphones, they were chanting, they were screaming. And sure enough, the mayor came out to talk to the protesters.

He kind of made his way through the crowd, walked up to the front, and you had one of the lead organizers for a group called the Black Visions Collective, Candace Montgomery. She was standing up on a riser there, talking down in a megaphone to the mayor. Jacob Fry, we have a yes or no question for you.

Yes or no, will you commit to defunding Minneapolis Police Department? And you could tell, like, there's this, like, hesitation in him because he knows this is not going to go well, right? You have all these very vocal, very ardent activists around you who want you to defund the police. Will you defund the Minneapolis Police Department?

All right, be quiet, y'all. Be quiet, because it's important that we actually hear this. It's important that we hear this, because if y'all don't know, he's up for re-election next year. And then... I do not support the phone-out on this. All right! Don't waste our time! And then... And he gives his answer. He does not support full abolition of the police.

And he turns around and he just kind of walked off into the sea of people. Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! So after this event, there was already an event planned for the following day by some of these same activist organizations in which they were going to bring council members who were supportive of their cause onto a stage in a park in the southern part of the city. And they were going to try to get them to make a commitment to defunding the police. So a lot like what they had done to the mayor. Exactly. Hi Minneapolis, you look so

beautiful today. I'm Lisa Bender, I'm the president of the Minneapolis City Council. And so we had this gathering where there were hundreds of residents. Our efforts at incremental reform have failed. Period. And you had council members. Our commitment is to do what's necessary to keep every single member of our community safe and to tell the truth that the Minneapolis police are not doing that. And you had nine of them who went up on the stage. We are here today to begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department. And then all nine of them each read apart,

pledging to defund the police. All of us on this stage support this statement, and we stand with the people of Minneapolis in fighting for a safer community. The last council member, he basically said, and we are all committing to this pledge. And at that moment, it was like this emotional eruption. You had white people, Black people, you know, Asian people, all putting their fists in the air, shouting defund police, defund police.

So just to be clear, this is not a vote. Defund police. Defund police. Defund FDD! Defund FDD! So just to be clear, this is not a vote. And not necessarily even a pledge to vote. But this is a public commitment to defund the police. To do the very thing that the mayor, when asked, declined to agree to 24 hours before. Yes, exactly. This is a pledge that they are going to defund the police. It is not a vote. It is not anything set in stone or written. But these are putting them all on record in front of many community members saying that we are going to do this. And, you know, I even asked the activists about that. I said, like, we've heard politicians

say things before and not keep those pledges. But this is something that they say they've been working on with them together in tandem. So I think there's a level of trust there that this pledge really meant something. And you could see it in the reaction of the people who were there. They were really describing it as kind of like their sort of civil rights moment, their voting rights act moment. Wow. And John, can the members of the city council who are in that park making this pledge, do they have the actual authority

to take away funding from the police department? Yes, they absolutely have voting authority to do that. The council actually controls the police department's budget. And what's more significant about this moment is that because there were nine of them, those nine seats represent a veto-proof majority. So even if the mayor, Jacob Fry, does not want this to happen, if that coalition sticks together, they can do this on their own. And I think what we're seeing is this

sentiment is growing in traction in certain places. Like we already have in New York and Los Angeles, the mayors in both of those cities have already said that they are going to be redirecting funds that were intended for the police toward other parts of the city, toward other agencies in the city. I'm curious what the appetite for this kind of change to policing is beyond the cities where there are largely Democratic city councils and mayors and where this is now under discussion? That's a very key question, right? We're already seeing conservatives coming out against this and talking about this as a very radical leftist step to be taking.

We see Donald Trump already tweeting about it. So certainly this is something that for conservative communities, something like this would be a tougher sell, right? And so again, policing is a very local thing. So what you experience and what the police force does or does not look like in Minneapolis is going to be very different than what it does or does not look like in Edina, which is just outside of Minneapolis or any other suburbs. So it's going to be in some ways a patchwork of public safety, I think, if these things start happening around the country. And I guess an open question is whether or not this has entered the mainstream,

even of the Democratic Party. Just a few hours before you and I began to talk, Joe Biden came out and said he does not support defunding the police. Yeah, this is certainly not something that is part of the mainstream or moderate democratic platform. That said, you do get some people who might be in these more moderate spaces, you do get their attention, you do get their ear, is this sense that policing is not working, which is just the basis of what these defund or abolish the police efforts are about, which is just the basis of what these defund or abolish the police efforts are about,

is that the system is not working. And so you will get even the more moderate folks to say that, to buy into that, and that may not result in them supporting a defund or abolishment, but will it support more stringent reforms, more significant reforms to police? So we'll see what happens. I wonder how the activists that you're talking to see the challenge of explaining what these concepts are going to mean. Because in this moment, I think many Americans

are really hearing these calls, defund, dismantle, abolish, for the first time. And they may be very wary of them, and they may see them as quite radical. What the activists will tell you is that while it might sound radical for many Americans, this actually is not all that radical for a large section of this country. What's your name, sir? Yasmin. How do you spell that?

Y-A-A-N-T. If you go to black and brown communities, like I went up to the north side of Minneapolis, and you talk to people about their experiences with the police there, it is not the experience of expecting an officer to come and help you. It's exactly the opposite. And I was speaking with a couple there, Amanda and Yasra Brazelton. It's about time for a change. A change. Yeah.

It's about time for a change. A change. It's about time for a change. And they were telling me that from a young age, essentially, they already had, you know, horrific experiences with the police. At seven years old, I had police put guns in my face. You know, at seven years old, coming to my house with my mother and my father

arguing, just a regular argument that happens with a husband and wife. Yazra, he was seven years old when the police came to his house when his parents were having an argument. And they put guns in my face and put us all on the ground. And they stuck a gun in his face. That traumatized me from childhood, so I was really against white police officers since.

And his wife Amanda, she was 14 when she was in a car with white people and she's Black. We were driving in the car. All my white friends got out. And as soon as I got out, they pulled guns, yelled at me. And when they were pulled over, the cops let the white people out, but then they pulled guns on her. I'm 14 years old in the backseat of the car, not doing nothing wrong. And that was like my first real incident with the police and that interaction, you know. And so the way they see the police department is not a force where you call and then an officer friendly shows up. And I got a house full of kids that are scared of the police

because of what they've seen. It's one where Amanda recalled her children have already had run-ins with the police. That when someone was breaking into their house once, she didn't call the police, but she called family and friends. I've called him, I've called my brother, I've called my uncle, I've called my dad, my mom before I called the police. Why didn't you call the police? Because they kill Black people. They'll call me out and get killed in my own home. So it's already a lived experience, a lived reality

for people in many Black communities that the police are essentially a force that only exists in their eyes to harass them, to brutalize them, and not to protect them. And what the activists hope is that people who are scared that abolishing police will suddenly lead to a breakdown in their communities and just rampant violence, they're saying, no, this will create outcomes that will make the community safer and better, not just for affluent white communities, but for all communities across the country. And so what activists are asking is that people who see this as a radical idea, who can't envision a world without police, they're asking them to just walk in these people's shoes, understand what they're going through. John, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. The nine members of the city council that came fromged to defund the city's police department, acknowledged that implementing the plan would likely take years. And if you look back at the last 150 years of our police department, it is becoming increasingly clear that that model of

policing isn't working. I hope it won't take 150 years to get to that looking forward, that next solution, but we have a lot of wisdom in our community. We have invested in community-based safety strategies. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Good morning, everyone. The Justice and Policing Act establishes a bold, transformative vision of policing in America. transformative vision of policing in America. On Monday, congressional Democrats introduced the most sweeping federal plan to reform the police in modern memory. Never again should the world be subjected to witnessing what we saw on the streets in Minneapolis, the slow murder of an individual by a uniformed police officer. The legislation would reduce the legal protections

that now shield police officers accused of misconduct from being prosecuted and would impose new restrictions to prevent police officers from using deadly force. The measure is expected to quickly pass in the House, where there's a Democratic majority, but faces an uncertain future in the Republican-controlled Senate. Meanwhile, state-level reforms continue. On Monday, New York's legislature banned the use of chokeholds by police and repealed a statute

that effectively hid the disciplinary records of police officers. And Almost 7 million cases of COVID-19 have now been reported to WHO and almost 400,000 deaths. Although the situation in Europe is improving, globally it's worsening. The World Health Organization said that the number of new daily infections from the coronavirus hit a record high, more than 136,000 on Sunday, and warned that mass protests in places like the U.S. could further spread the virus.

We encourage all those protesting around the world to do so safely. Clean your hands, cover your cough, and wear a mask if you attend a protest. Finally, the National Bureau of Economic Research said that because of the pandemic, the United States economy officially entered a recession in February, ending the longest economic expansion on record. It began in 2009 and lasted 128 months. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

My colleague, Caitlin Dickerson, will host the show tomorrow.