Defunding the Police is Still a Good Idea
For a certain kind of Democratic Party strategist Democrats lost in 2024 for a simple reason. They veered too far left. This specific type of consultant is prone to complaining that Democrats, specifically usually some vague subset of the party, activists, or nonprofits, pushed for “purity” on issues such as “defunding the police.”
Usually this kind of consultant shows their ass in the process, picking an issue just like defunding the police that the Democrats have long since abandoned. If they stuck with it though, maybe they wouldn’t have lost.
On issue after issue the Democratic Party veered left in 2020, eager to capitalize on energized activists, often drawn to the political process due to a steadfast commitment to whatever their own issue set happens to be. Abolitionists, immigrants and their allies, labor, and so many others were bent on shaping the process and hopefully creating a primary that led to a candidate that took their issues seriously.
Nowhere did the Democrats bend over backwards to harness that energy more than abolitionist calls to defund the police. Democratic party politicians from mayors to members of congress tried to prove their commitment to racial justice by all sorts of symbolic gestures bucking the status quo but very rarely actually meeting activists demands or suggestions.
They certainly didn’t meet them on defunding the police. Lets be clear about one thing, police were not actually defunded, anywhere. But they should have been because it was a good idea then and it is still a good idea today.
Lets be clear about something else, people don’t like the police. That was obvious to everyone in 2020, so some of the more innovative Democratic politicos decided to come out and let their skepticism be known. Not by advocating for a different system of public safety, but usually with overt gestures toward some symbolic form of racial equity while leaving the power structures, like policing, that make are racial hierarchies possible completely unscathed. However, they were reaching for something real. Police use violence that people are opposed to in order to enforce social strata that people do not believe in. Sometimes that slaps us all in the face and people’s true feelings are easier to stomach. Other times the overwhelming copaganda that keeps it all in place prevails.
In those moments where the mask comes off and it is clear police are violent, it is easy to call to defund them. Replace that system of violence with something that actually solves people’s problems. Something that takes care of their material needs. Something that makes right the wrongs that come with community instead of warehousing humans and allowing those in power of the mechanisms of the state to profit.
Simply spending money on treatment instead of policing would be a good start, even if our current treatment system leaves a lot to be desired. The problem is there is no money for trying anything new. All the money goes to propping up the old. Defund the police and spend that money on systems that actually make people safer. Defund the police and try something new, try something that doesn’t disguise state violence as a solution to our problem and not the problem.
There is plenty of money, but right now it all goes to the police. That is what defund the police realized. Not that police don’t do some things to keep people safe sometimes, but that they are not enough to keep people safe all the time. To do that we need a social safety net. We need healthcare, housing, and education. We need money to go somewhere other than the police. We need to stop giving the police budget increases every year and spread that money around. When it comes to a city, county, or state budget, defunding the police means more pie for everyone and everything else. That was a noble goal. And it still is.