Democracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion Defund the police? Here’s what that really means.

By
Contributing columnist
June 7, 2020 at 6:37 p.m. EDT
The police crackdown on largely peaceful protests has shown that bad cops are largely protected, covered for and shielded from liability, says Radley Balko. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images/The Washington Post)

Christy E. Lopez is a professor at Georgetown Law School and a co-director of the school’s Innovative Policing Program.

Since George Floyd’s death, a long-simmering movement for police abolition has become part of the national conversation, recast slightly as a call to “defund the police.” For activists, this conversation is long overdue. But for casual observers, this new direction may seem a bit disorienting — or even alarming.