Well, it appears Davin does not want to tell us his plan to defund police. I suppose I must remain in my ignorance.
I'm not Davin, but I'll tell you what defunding police means for my community.
I live in Minneapolis and have done for the past 5+ years. I am ecstatic that my city councilmember is among those who’ve pledged to dismantle the MPD. Dismantling the MPD doesn’t mean there’s no law enforcement. It means that, in the short term, Minneapolis may end up contracting for law enforcement from another jurisdiction. And it means that, in the long term, we build a new Minneapolis law enforcement agency from the ground up, with a much smaller footprint than the current MPD. And we funnel much of the funding previously earmarked for MPD to non-law-enforcement (social work and treatment) entities that can respond to 911 calls involving mental health or drug crises.
When all you’ve got is a hammer (police), everything starts to look like a nail. The US locks up a ridiculous percentage of our citizens for behavior that shouldn’t be criminalized. And once you’re in the “system,” it’s difficult to get out, especially if you’re poor. Once you’re on probation, you’ve got someone in your business 24-7.
But I digress.
MPD is beyond repair or reform. Citizens have been trying to reform it since the 1960s. Every X number of years, an officer murders a resident, and a new citizen review board is set up, with no actual power. And after a few years, the citizen review board is dismantled. As a local organization that is committed to defunding MPD, MPD 150, has pointed out, what's more "pie in the sky," defunding MPD and starting anew, or thinking that a new tweak to the existing department will improve outcomes in the future?
Monthly, MPD pays out thousands of dollars to settle excessive-force suits.
It does no good to fire the “bad apples.” The police union (which broke with the mainstream US labor movement in the 1930s) is all powerful, and the city is forced to hire back the fired cops a few months later. The union contract is negotiated between the city and the union reps, but if the city council chooses not to approve the new contract, that just means that the old contract continues.
MPD has had the feds step in to review the department, but MPD has yet to implement those reforms. And there’s no consequence for not implementing them, so why would MPD comply?
I don’t think simply slashing the MPD budget is the answer either. I’ve heard it pointed out that doing that means the younger, possibly more progressive officers are fired, leaving us with older officers already steeped in MPD’s racist culture and failed ways.
It doesn’t matter that there are good cops. They can have very little impact when the department as a whole and as an institution is rotten and beyond rehabilitation and when the majority of cops give their fealty to the racist police union. Time for a completely new agency.
And the problems in Minneapolis and MPD aren’t unique to here. This needs to happen nationwide.
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