Hopefully before toddler tyrant Donald "Bunker Boy" Trump has completely altered the meanings of the terms "police reform," "defund police," and "abolish police," here are some brief attempts to define those terms that we found helpful.
Reform
...[E]ven as we try to shift resources from policing to programs that will better promote fairness and public safety, we must continue the work of police reform. We cannot stop regulating police conduct now because we hope someday to reduce or eliminate our reliance on policing. We must ban chokeholds and curb the use of no-knock warrants; we must train officers how to better respond to people in mental health crises, and we must teach officers to be guardians, not warriors, to intervene to prevent misconduct and to understand and appreciate the communities they serve. (Christy Lopez, Innovative Policing Program, Georgetown Law School)House Democrats have also introduced the "Justice in Policing Act of 2020,"which contains a broad array of reforms "to hold police accountable, change the culture of law enforcement and build trust between law enforcement and our communities." It likely awaits a Biden administration and a Senate not controlled by Moscow Mitch McConnell to be enacted. But it will be a significant step forward when that day comes.
Defund
Calls to defund police departments are generally seeking spending cuts to police forces that have consumed ever larger shares of city budgets in many cities and towns. Minneapolis, for instance, is looking to cut $200 million from its $1.3 billion overall annual budget, said Lisa Bender, the City Council president. The police budget in 2020 was $189 million. She hopes to shift money to other areas of need in the city...
Many activists want money now spent on overtime for the police or on buying expensive equipment for police departments to be shifted to programs related to mental health, housing and education — areas that the activists say with sufficient money could bring about systemic societal change and cut down on crime and violence. (Dionne Searcy, New York Times)
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AbolishFor most proponents, “defunding the police” does not mean zeroing out budgets for public safety, and police abolition does not mean that police will disappear overnight — or perhaps ever. Defunding the police means shrinking the scope of police responsibilities and shifting most of what government does to keep us safe to entities that are better equipped to meet that need. It means investing more in mental-health care and housing, and expanding the use of community mediation and violence interruption programs. (Lopez, WaPo))
Leaders in different cities have advocated various specific plans, but generally speaking, the calls aim to reimagine public safety tactics in ways that are different from traditional police forces. Activists say their intent is to ensure safety and justice but to wind up with a different system. Years of consent decrees and investigations into human rights violations by police departments have yielded little change, they say, so a more fundamental shift is needed. (Searcy, NYT)
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Police abolition means reducing, with the vision of eventually eliminating, our reliance on policing to secure our public safety. It means recognizing that criminalizing addiction and poverty, making 10 million arrests per year and mass incarceration have not provided the public safety we want and never will. The “abolition” language is important because it reminds us that policing has been the primary vehicle for using violence to perpetuate the unjustified white control over the bodies and lives of black people that has been with us since slavery. That aspect of policing must be literally abolished. (Lopez, WaPo)
Other resources, such as Campaign Zero's "#8Can'tWait" reform campaign, are embedded in one or both of the articles for further information.
The problem that's arising is that, for many, these are loaded terms that don't convey the complexity of what is being proposed, thus lending themselves to misinterpretation by demagogues like Trump, his fascist factotum William "Low" Barr and the rest of the authoritarian right- wing mob (including police unions). We have to make sure that somehow the true sense of what's being discussed prevails.
