Calls to “defund the police” reverberated throughout communities across the US in the summer of 2020, when millions took to the streets to protest a brutal, unchecked, and racist system of police violence and control. Then came the backlash. Since the initial push by activists and protestors to get the public to consider alternatives to endlessly increasing police spending, a forceful chorus has pushed in the opposite direction, demanding more funding for more police who should be given more power over our lives. “Defund the police” has been criticized for being not only a “bad slogan” but a political pipe dream that fails to reckon with the messy realities of maintaining “public safety.”

However, as Geo Maher argues in his latest book, A World without Police: How Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete, America’s policing system is a demonstrably terrible way to keep people and communities safe. In fact, Maher writes, police “don’t prevent violence, and they don’t make any measurable contribution to public safety… The police have wormed their way into the very foundations of American society and work every day to make themselves—and their bloated budgets—seem indispensable.” In this special conversation for the TRNN podcast, Police Accountability Report Host Stephen Janis speaks with Maher about his groundbreaking assessment of American policing and the practical necessity of collectively devising better models for communal safety.

Pre-Production/Studio: Stephen Janis
Post Production: Stephen Janis, Stephen Frank

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.