Is It Time to Defund the Police?

FEATURING ALEX VITALE – The violent police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and countless other black Americans has touched off a nerve in American society and sparked not only an unprecedented nationwide uprising, but also a reevaluation of the role of police in society.

Meeting protests against state violence with more violence, American police appear tone deaf to the increasingly negative light in which even the American mainstream views them. It is in this context that we are now seeing multiple calls to defund the police – a heretofore unmentionable idea.

Read Alex Vitale’s latest book is called The End of Policing. He just wrote an article in the Guardian called The answer to police violence is not ‘reform’. It’s defunding. Here’s why.  And, he also wrote an article in The Nation called The Only Solution Is to Defund the Police.

Alex Vitale, Professor of Sociology and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. His writings about policing have appeared in the New York Times, New York Daily News, USA Today, the Nation, and Vice News. His latest book is called The End of Policing.