‘It’s a Money Grab’: Billions in COVID Relief Going to Fund Police and Prisons Less than two years after racial justice protests sparked calls to “defund the police,” states and jurisdictions are using pandemic aid to pad already bloated law enforcement budgets. Brian Dolinar
How These Cities Are Breaking Up the Work of Police Departments As the country reassesses its relationship with law enforcement, Ithaca, New York; Berkeley and Oakland, California; and Austin, Texas, are defunding, replacing, or reducing the scope of their police departments. Eoin Higgins
Aftab Pureval and David Mann Win Cincinnati Mayoral Primary The candidates—who didn’t support an affordable housing investment that was rejected by voters today—now advance to the November ballot. Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
Philadelphia Police Aren’t Solving Crimes. It’s Time to Divert Their Funding This budget season, Philadelphia must hold our law enforcement accountable for their failures by redirecting resources to strategies that can help us. Kendra Brooks
Austin May Use Money Cut From Police Budget To Establish Permanent Supportive Housing The City Council will decide whether to buy two hotels and use funds diverted from its police budget to set up wraparound services for the homeless people who will live there. Meg O'Connor
What Traffic Enforcement Without Police Could Look Like Because traffic stops all too often escalate into deadly incidents, calls have grown to disentangle traffic enforcement from police—and a measure to do so has already passed in Berkeley, California. Meg O'Connor
What Public Safety Without Police Looks Like From San Francisco to Philadelphia, cities across the country are creating fully unarmed response teams to address emergencies that used to call for cops. Jerry Iannelli, Joshua Vaughn
Police Funding Is a Pivotal Issue in Two Austin City Council Runoffs Incumbents Jimmy Flannigan and Alison Alter have been targeted by conservative challengers because of the council’s votes to cut police funding and repeal a ban on public camping. Meg O'Connor
Some Texas Elections Suggest Voters Aren’t Afraid of Defunding Police None of the Austin City Council members who voted to cut police funding lost their elections, but a police union vice president who fearmongered about the defund movement did. Meg O'Connor
Armed Michigan Protesters Fueled Jon Hoadley’s Commitment To Run For Congress If he wins his bid to represent the state’s Sixth District, Hoadley says he would reallocate police funding, improve health care, and invest in rural communities. Dawn R. Wolfe
Esther Agbaje Wants to Solve ‘The Million Dollar Question’ of Racial Disparities Across Minnesota If she wins at the ballot box in November, Agbaje would become the state’s first Nigerian American state legislator. Dawn R. Wolfe
Athena Hollins Takes On Public Safety, Housing, And Affordable Child Care In Her Run For The Minnesota House When it comes to public safety, Hollins doesn’t want to stop with reallocating police funding. She’d like her state to track both proven and alleged instances of police misconduct. Dawn R. Wolfe
The Minneapolis City Council’s Attempt To Defund the Police Was Thwarted By An Unelected Charter Commission Contrary to reports, most City Council members—who ran and won by pledging to advance racial equity—tried to do the right thing, but were stalled by a charter commission that overstepped its authority. Scott Shaffer
Carroll Fife Is Fighting To Make Oakland Safer And More Equitable For Everyone In her run for City Council, Fife pushes back on the institutional barriers to Black people that come from a history of oppression. Eoin Higgins
What ‘Defund The Police’ Means In A New York Neighborhood With High Homicide Rates and a History of Struggling for Justice Although there’s a diversity of views about law enforcement in Brownsville, Brooklyn, there’s widespread agreement that the community is still fighting to obtain all the resources it needs to thrive and police itself. Abigail Savitch-Lew
New York City Pledged to Fund Programs to Stop Domestic Violence Without Involving the Legal System. But There’s Disagreement About How to Do It. Rates of reporting domestic violence are low in immigrant communities, where survivors of abuse often don’t want to involve the police. As an alternative, the de Blasio administration promised to fund community-based domestic violence programming—but those funds were delayed, and advocates fear programs with strong community ties may not meet the city’s requirements. Roshan Abraham
Austin Cuts Its Police Budget by About A Third The City Council passed a budget that cut nearly $150 million from the Austin Police Department. Millions will be reinvested in services like violence prevention and supportive housing. Meg O'Connor
Austin May Cut Police Budget by Nearly $150 Million The City Council will pass a budget this week that could cut nearly $150 million in funding from the Austin Police Department. The proposal appears to have majority support. Meg O'Connor
It’s Time To Defund The University of Mississippi Police Department From crackdowns on Black students decades ago to more recent arrests during protests against neo-Confederates, the department has served as a tool for enforcing white supremacy. Cam Calisch
The Bumpy Road to Police Abolition Protesters and activists have categorically changed the national conversation about public safety. Now they have to figure out how to change public policy. Ted Alcorn
How the Phoenix Police Department Spends Its $745 Million Budget The city wants to give the force an additional $24 million. But the department is still failing to solve crimes, and officers have shot 212 people between 2011 and 2018, killing about half. Meg O'Connor
U.N. to Hold Debate On U.S. Police Violence After families of people killed by police asked the organization to investigate racist American policing, 54 African nations called for a debate on the treatment of Black Americans. The debate will happen today. Jonathan Ben-Menachem
Too Little Has Changed About American Policing In the Last Few Decades. It’s Time For Something Different. The killing of George Floyd demonstrates that incremental police reforms are insufficient in the absence of a comprehensive plan to transform law enforcement and its stated purpose. David A. Love
Don’t Let Cops Join Our Protests Cops who turn marches against police violence into parades don’t actually want substantial changes to policing. Derecka Purnell
