KENTUCKY ⁠— Calls to defund police departments have flooded social media the past several weeks after Breonna Taylor and David McAtee were killed by Louisville Metro Police Department officers and George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis.  

Minneapolis City Council announced Sunday they would defund and disband their police department. Members of the city council say they want to cut funding to the Minneapolis Police Department in its entirety despite objections from Mayor Jacob Frey (D). Despite council members in Minnesota working to dismantle the police department, most call for defunding, not complete elimination. Rather, it’s a call for state and local governments to shift funding away from police departments and invest the money back into impoverished communities most affected by police brutality. 

Georgetown Law School professor Christy Lopez wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post it is not all about funding, but also removing some of the responsibilities police officers are tasked with and moving them to different parts of the community. University of Louisville assistant professor of Criminal Justice Dr. Ben Fisher says police are increasingly being called upon to deal with policing the homeless and those dealing with mental health issues or policing at schools. 

“The police are often the first choice to respond to those different situations,” Fisher said. “Calls to defund the police are saying let’s take that money that we are putting in police and reuse it to invest in communities and preventative efforts and more mental health services that may be more appropriate to the people who are in need."

Black Lives Matter is calling for the defunding of all police departments including LMPD which has been responsible for the death of two black people in three months. Fisher says these calls are a way to combat the racism that has been ingrained in the policing system for years. 

“Hearing calls to defund the police is one of many strategies to counteracting this systemic racism,” he said. “Where we see investment in low-income communities of color it’s the investment in ways of punishing them and holding those communities back rather than giving them a kickstart or seeing economic progress.” 

Calls for defunding the police are not one-size fits all, however. 

“When you say defund the police it means different things to different people, because where does the money come from for the police but the question is what do you want the police to do and how do you want them to do it,”  K.A. Owens, a board member on the Kentucky Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression explains.

Many of those pushing for defunding police departments instead of police reform say it’s gone too far to be able to fix and view it as throwing more taxpayer money at a broken system. 

“For example giving police body cameras that’s putting more money into policing and relying on technology to surveil our citizens by a police force that has shown for centuries that it’s unjust,” he said. “The contrast between reform and defunding is one of folks viewing the system as redeemable.” 

The conversation surrounding defunding police and reforming is not a new conversation. 

“What is the purpose of policing in the 21st century and do we need to redefine that and that’s what people are talking about all across the country,” said Owens. “Of course some people have in the past have shut down and rebuilt their police departments on a different model because they had failed police departments."

But many say it’s not just the police departments that need change—it’s the criminal justice system as a whole where prosecutors are also given too much power. 

“You still have three strike laws. Do we need a police department that harasses black and brown people arrests them on petty charges sticks them with a criminal record so they can’t have a record so they can’t have a future and then the prosecutor sends them right to jai, they become criminalize,” said Owens. “So in other words the police are part of a failed system in America, and so that’s what we’re talking about.”

Many advocates say that heavily police presence in areas can increase the amount of crime, Fisher has a focus on police in schools and says there is strong evidence that the presence of police negatively impacts the students. “From my research in school settings we’re definitely seeing when police are around crime is up.” 

Those critical of policing believe things cannot stay the way there are. 

“Changing the policy of policing in America is long overdue, and the budget and what you spend your money on is what you care about and the war on drugs, the war on crime, actually is and  has been obsolete,” said Owens.  “It is has just lead to the persecution of black and brown people and poor people."

Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, however, does not support this movement and described defunding and disbanding police departments as “extremely dangerous and reckless."