What Is "Defund the Police"?

“Defund the police” is a phrase used to call for law enforcement reform in♊ the United States. Ideas about defunding the police range from replacing police forces with something else entirely to🌞 reallocating police funds to social programs.

History of "Defund the Police"

Calls to rein in the power of police forces in America go back a long way, with writers, philanthropists, activists, academics, and citizens calling for change amid misuse or misunderstanding of the power granted to law enforcement. Here are some of the more recent circumstances that have led to increased awareness of the unnecessary force used by some officers and the resulting calls for help from communities subjected to it.

2012–2014

Black Lives Matter, a movement that supports defunding the police, was formed after Trayvon Martin’s 2012 death in Florida. In 2014, the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, led to riots in Ferguson, Missouri. Eric Garner’s death by chokehold in New York later that same ﷺyear caused pressure for change to build further. His last words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry at e൩vents.

2015–2020

A 2015 U.S. Department of Justice report found racial bias in the treatment of the Black community in the Ferguson Police Department. In March 2020, the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, would also result in protests, and on May 25, 2020, the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis, Minnesota police officer who knelt on his neck for about nine minutes sparked international protests. Advocacy groups described Floyd’s death as a “breaking point” in relation to defund-the-police initiatives.

2020–2023

The movement’s media attention receded somewhat after Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. However, it again began making headlines during his term, with legislators introducing bills proposing cuts to certain federal law enforcement program budgets. Debates over policing continued to rage, and some cities in the U.S. began changing their police budgets. The ones that decreased their budgets reverted the reductions in the years following as crime appeared to rise.

2024–Present

During the 2024 presidential election, party front-runners Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both took positions on the movement, and various media outlets again began di🥂scussing the feasibility and/or need to defund law enforcement.

On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly stated his pro-law enforcement funding stance, accepting an endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police while advocating for giving power and respect back to the police. Harris also advocated for law enforcement funding.

Trump won the election and took office in January 2025, but was criticized by the Fraternal Order of Police and other law enforcement organizations for pardoning nearly all of the 1,500 people charged in connection with the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Some of those defendants had been sentenced to prison for attacking law enforcement that day.

What Effect Has the Movement Had?

The Increase Funding Approach

Reports suggest that most cities have not decreased police funding at all. In many cases, budgets have been increased. A 2022 investigation by ABC Owned Television Stations found that 90% of cities increased spending after 2019. Supporting these findings in 2024 was an increase in budget and patrol officers in San Antonio, Texas. The city plans to hire 65 new officers in 2025 and 360 more officers in three to five years.

An Alternative to the Police Approach

Alternatively, some cities have made 🅺genuine attempts to use funds differently, not necessarily to defund. Durham, North Carolina, demonstrates the merit of this approach.

In 2022, Durham created unarmed emergency response teams called Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Teams (HEART). Rather than following traditional procedures of sending police officers to deal with nonviolent situations, this program:

• Embeds mental health clinicians in Durham’s 911 center
• Dispatches unarmed three-person teams to nonviolent calls for service
• Follow up with those in crisis after the response to help them connect with proper service providers
• Pairs mental health clinicians with police officers in calls with higher safety concerns

The program reported the following for the period from 💮𝕴June 2022 to December 2024:

• There were 25,005 HEART responses
• Unarmed community response teams deployed 12,000 times
• Crisis call counselors were engaged in 4,643 encounters
• Clinicians and police (co-response teams) responded to 4,857 crises, of which only 379 were domestic violence incidents
• Care navigation teams followed up on 3,068 mental health incidents
• HEART responders felt safe in 99% of the encounters
• Community response teams and co-response teams resolved 56.81% and 57.06% of their calls, respectively, with less than 3% of calls being redirected to the police.
  

Results like these are encouraging because they reveal that many calls law enforcement responds to do not require armed responses or aggressive policing. Indeed, they suggest that there are w🍌ays to address issues other than increasing armed responses.

The Defund Approach

The most prominent issue with defunding police departments is a corresponding increase in crime in some areas. In 2020, Washington, D.C. decreased police budgets by $15 million, only to increase them again in 2023 due to a 37% increase in violent crime compared to 2022. Homicides were reportedly up 25% for the same period. Los Angeles and New York faced similar situations when cutting police budgets.

The Bottom Line

It’s difficult to find a city that has taken steps to defund its police due to the direct influence of the defund movement and kept its reduced budget. Budget redu𓃲ctions have been made for other reas♓ons, such as overspending, but the consequences of defunding the police appear to be negative for the communities where the police budgets were reduced. In some cases, cities have redirected funds to alternative social solutions with promising results.

Not considering the posturing for votes by politicians, calls to defund the police have generally subsided overall as many people have become more aware of the need to address the use of force by the police. 🐓There is still debate on what to do about policing—in this regard, the movement was very effective: It has raised awareness and triggered discussion about issues that must be addressed.