Yeah, it looks the notion of defunding the police is not taking hold even in liberal cities. In short, this will happen only if some police responsibilities, for example like responding to overdose calls will be taken over by a different organization. here is how backtracking looks like:
‘Defund the police’: Advocates say it means reimagining policing, not getting rid of it
But the rapid rise of “defund” ideas comes in the middle of a presidential campaign, widespread unrest and a pandemic that has the nation’s anxieties in overdrive. Its advocates worry that the timing leaves the concept vulnerable to attack for what they insist it’s not — eliminating police departments.
“No one’s talking about a situation where tomorrow, there’s some magical switch and there are no police,” Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College and author of “
The End of Policing,” told
CNN. “It’s hard to reduce these ideas down to a cardboard sign or a tweet.
“We’re talking about looking at our gross over-reliance on policing and searching in every possible way to replace that with alternatives designed to build up people, to build up communities rather than criminalizing them,” Vitale said.
Nevertheless, “‘defund the police’ is a terrible phrase,” George Lakoff, the retired UC Berkeley professor who has long been a messaging guru to Democrats and progressive groups, told The Chronicle. “You need the police. It’s irresponsible (to use it) because you’re not going to take away the police.”
The challenge, Lakoff said, is “that it takes several sentences to explain.”
The concept generally refers to shrinking police responsibility and delegating some of law enforcement’s duties to other experts — for example, having social workers respond to homelessness complaints or health care workers handle people with substance abuse issues.
Fearful of diving into unknown political waters, many Democratic politicians — even those leading the call for reforms — are backing away from the phrase, if not the concept.
That list starts with Biden, who spent much of his career boasting of his support for the 1994 federal crime bill that put 100,000 more police officers on the street. Last year, he said some of it was successful, some wasn’t. He told CBS on Monday that, “No, I don’t support defunding the police. I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness.”
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said on “Meet the Press” that “it’s not a slogan I will use,” even though he said he agreed with the “sentiment and substance” of it and encouraged people not to “dismiss it” just because of its name.
Sen. Kamala Harris, who
co-sponsored federal police reform legislation with Booker this week, parried the question from interviewer Meghan McCain on ABC’s “The View,” asking her, “How are you defining ‘defund the police?’”
The California Democrat said that “we need to reimagine how we are achieving public safety in America” so that cities aren’t spending “one-third of their budgets” on the police.
Similarly, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday in Oakland that he did not support defunding departments if it meant “eliminating” police. Instead, he preferred “reimagining” law enforcement.
In San Francisco,
Chief Scott said Monday that he was willing to defund a portion of his department’s budget in response to calls for reform.
“We’re at a time in policing in this country where the whole world is speaking to us, and we need to hear what’s being said,” Scott said during an online forum hosted by the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club. “And what’s being said is we have to change the way we do policing in this country. And I think, for me, I’m open to that.”
