“Defund the police” has suddenly become a commonplace chant and slogan in cities across America. But what would putting the phrase into action actually look like? Intelligencer editors Benjamin Hart and Ezekiel Kweku and writer Ed Kilgore discuss.
Ben: “Defund the police” is on protesters’ lips in cities across the country. It’s a phrase that carries different meanings depending on who you talk to, from abolishing the police department to overhauling municipal budgets. On Monday, Joe Biden unsurprisingly came out and said he was against the overarching idea. But on Sunday, Minneapolis’s City Council said it intends to dismantle the city’s police force (details are nebulous at the moment), and Bill de Blasio said for the first time that he’d cut funding to the NYPD. Much more transformation in many more places seems inevitable. What do you think “defund the police” might end up translating to in terms of on-the-ground change?
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