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Your Call

The Growing Calls To Defund Police & What That Would Look Like

John Minchillo / AP Photo
A Minneapolis police officer in riot gear advances on protesters, May 29, 2020, in St. Paul, Minn.

  On this edition of Your Call, we continue our series on the uprisings over the death of George Floyd and police brutality. According to Mapping Police Violence, from 2013 to 2019, 99 percent of killings by police did not result in officers being charged with a crime.

Activists say police reform has not worked in cities like Minneapolis, where black people are 13 times more likely to be killed by cops than white people. They say the only solution is to defund the police. What would that look like?

Guests:

Philip V. McHarris, PhD candidate at Yale University whose research focuses on police spending and police militarization

Tony Williams, an organizer with MPD150, an independent community coalition working towards a police-free Minneapolis

Web Resources: 

The New York Times, Philip V. McHarris and Thenjiwe McHarris:No More Money for the Police 

Black Youth Project, Philip V. McHarris: Increases in police funding will not make Black people safe, it is time city leaders listened

The Nation, Alex Vitale: The Only Solution Is to Defund the Police

The Marshall Project: Before George Floyd’s Death, Minneapolis Police Failed to Adopt Reforms, Remove Bad Officers