As protests persist across the country in response to police brutality and the murder of George Floyd, many are pushing for cities to defund their police departments. The movement to defund police has been met with confusion, so John Legend offered his explanation as to what defunding police would really look like. No, it doesn’t mean abolishing police entirely. Rather, defunding police suggests redistributing budgets away from police and towards social programs.
Legend opened his explainer by acknowledging that many conjure up images from The Purge when envisioning American cities defunding police departments. “I know this word ‘defund’ has caused some controversy, even from some who are inclined to agree with a lot of the underlying arguments,” he began.
I know this word “defund” has caused some controversy, even from some who are inclined to agree with a lot of the underlying arguments. Some hear that word and envision The Purge, some dystopian descent into anarchy
— John Legend (@johnlegend) June 7, 2020
Some intentionally want to cast the argument in extremes like that so they can score political points. But I ask that those of you who are reasonable and actually care about making this country healthy and safe for all people engage with the thoughtful arguments in this piece
— John Legend (@johnlegend) June 7, 2020
Legend pointed out that huge portions of a city’s budget are directly funneled into police departments. Money that could potentially benefit social service programs like health care and education, which are known to benefit low-income areas and reduce the crime rate, suffer at the expense of police surveillance.
Police funding takes up a huge portion of our local budgets. Budgets are moral documents which spell out in black and white what our priorities are. We have finite amounts of money to spend and right now we spend far too much on policing
— John Legend (@johnlegend) June 7, 2020
And that choice comes at a cost. We defund housing support, health care, education and child care, the arts, drug treatment, community centers, all sorts of services that would actually reduce the problems that we ask the police to surveil and contain
— John Legend (@johnlegend) June 7, 2020
Instead, Legend nudges his followers to envision a “healthier world” in which we use resources to uplift communities, rather than policing them. Legend explains that defunding police doesn’t mean getting rid of them entirely. It means there would be fewer police officers combined with more social workers touting expertise in areas like health care, conflict resolution, and drug treatment.
Whenever there are budget cuts, those “softer” services are on the chopping block first. And, since we know we’re not solving the underlying problems, we figure we better keep a huge police force to contain them. Let’s resolve to do differently. Let’s imagine a healthier world
— John Legend (@johnlegend) June 7, 2020
This doesn’t mean there will be no police; it means there should be significantly fewer police and more professionals of other types with expertise in their fields, whether it’s social work, health care, conflict resolution, drug treatment, etc
— John Legend (@johnlegend) June 7, 2020
The singer explains that the operative word in the movement is “defund,” which is meant to signal a redistribution of resources away from policing forces and towards other programs. Electing to “reform” or “retrain” police would not be as effective, as many cities have been retraining officers for decades and yet police brutality still persists.
“defund” is the word because it says we’re taking away some funding from one budget item and moving it to higher priorities. “reform” or “retrain” does not at all suggest the same thing. We’ve been supposedly doing the latter for decades
— John Legend (@johnlegend) June 7, 2020
Legend ended his message by reminding his followers that increasing the minimum wage and passing gay marriage laws seemed impossible decades ago, but activists have successfully pushed legislation that has made progress a reality.
Everyone was saying $15 minimum wage and Medicare for All and gay marriage were also unrealistic and ridiculous but activists moved the conversation and pushed politicians toward progress
— John Legend (@johnlegend) June 7, 2020
Read Legend’s full explainer on defunding the police above.