But what does it actually mean to defund a police department? With more funding for those services, activists say, more people would be cared for, and crime and violence would decrease. When I spoke with Marqueece Harris-Dawson, a Los Angeles City Council member, he mentioned the example of police officers escorting people experiencing homelessness onto buses to go to shelters, only because they were the only public workers able to do the job. “If all you’ve got in your toolbox is a hammer, you tend to think everything is a nail,” he said. Activists in Los Angeles have noted that the $150 million cut Mr. Garcetti proposed is just a fraction of the department’s more than $1.8 billion budget.

Source: New York Times June 09, 2020 13:05 UTC