Officers in riot gear blocked a road in Minneapolis on May 30. Nationwide protests against police brutality have driven calls for a re-imagining of law enforcement.
Photo: kerem yucel/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesMomentum to overhaul policing across the nation gained steam on Monday, as a sweeping House bill and a push to cut funding to departments snowballed amid protests sparked by the killing of a black man in Minneapolis police custody last month.
A bill House Democrats unveiled Monday would make it easier to prosecute officers for misconduct, collect national data and establish new training programs to counter racial bias. The bill doesn’t provide any new federal funds for police departments, except where constitutionally mandated for data collection, according to Democratic aides.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and New York City and others have launched efforts to shrink or restructure their police forces and budgets. Officials in other cities, including San Francisco, Baltimore and Philadelphia, are considering similar moves.
Still, calls to pull funding from law enforcement are meeting resistance among some policy makers who back other changes.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, said he supports “massive structural and transformational reform” but not a full breakdown of the current department. “Am I for entirely abolishing the police department? No I’m not,” Mr. Frey said Monday on Good Morning America. The police killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, in Minneapolis on May 25 sparked the recent protests that have fanned out across the country.
Activists who have sought cuts to police funding have in recent days embraced the slogan “Defund the Police.” The meaning of that message, which has appeared on countless signs and T-shirts during protests, isn’t entirely consistent, even among those supporting it.
Some, like Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, said they eventually want to see police forces abolished entirely. Meanwhile, she would like to see at least some funding shifted from police departments toward organizations that support marginalized communities.
Minneapolis officials spoke with community members on Sunday, the same day the city council agreed to begin the process of disbanding the police department.
Photo: Jerry Holt/Zuma Press“It’s a powerful moment,” said Ms. Cullors. “I think that we have to really respond this time to the courage of these mayors and city council members because they’re listening to the community—finally.”
Others aren’t pushing to eliminate police departments but rather to cut funding to trim their responsibilities. Police have too many interactions with the public, they say—from monitoring high schools and answering drug-overdose emergency calls to responding to mental-health emergencies—all while heavily armed, which increases the likelihood of escalating into a violent encounter. Cutting funding and shifting responsibilities to specialists like social workers or mental-health professionals, they say, would cut down on what the police need to do and provide better outcomes for communities.
On Monday, a campaign spokesman for Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said the former vice president “does not believe that police should be defunded.” Mr. Biden has proposed increased investments in community policing, curbing the transfer of military weapons to police departments and banning chokeholds from police.
Meanwhile, President Trump, who has sought to tie his November opponent to the defunding push, said, “We won’t be defunding our police. We won’t be dismantling our police.” The president did acknowledge that there are things that shouldn’t have happened that contributed to Mr. Floyd’s killing.
Some police, while backing the need for reforms, reject suggestions that they’re overtaxed and overfunded.
“What will we say to that victim of domestic violence who waits even longer for a police response due to shortages of personnel in the field? What do we say to the woman who was sexually assaulted, yet her assailant is still on the loose because resources are not available to locate him?” said the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the city’s police union, in a statement.
The U.S. is now in its third week of protests following the death of Mr. Floyd, whom officers arrested on May 25 for allegedly trying to pass off a counterfeit $20 bill. Video that circulated widely on social media showed a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, pressing his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as Mr. Floyd pleaded for mercy and said he couldn’t breathe before losing consciousness.
Initially, the demonstrations focused largely on what happened to Mr. Floyd as well as a legacy of police abuse against black people. In recent days, protesters and activists have pushed for policy changes, with defunding at the center of those calls.
The demonstrations seem to be making an impact.
In Minneapolis a veto-proof majority of the city council agreed Sunday to begin the process of disbanding the police department.
The contours of the process aren’t yet clear, but some council members said the force would still be equipped to respond to events requiring an aggressive response.
“We’re not talking about eliminating safety,” said council member Jeremiah Ellison. “We’re talking about eliminating a system that has failed to deliver safety.”
Rep. Karen Bass (D., Calif.) speaks at a news conference Monday to unveil a bill by House Democrats that would make it easier to prosecute officers for misconduct, among other measures.
Photo: jonathan ernst/ReutersCamden, N.J., a city of more 70,000 residents, disbanded and restructured its police force in 2013, after the city struggled with its violent crime rate. The county took over law enforcement and adopted a new community-policing and de-escalation strategy. Since that year the city has seen a 79% reduction in murder and a 59% reduction in robbery, according to data provided by Camden County.
“It’s using force as a last resort,” said Dan Keashen, the county’s director of public affairs. Mr. Keashen said the department’s budget was never defunded, but officials did reallocate how the money was spent, including by renegotiating employee benefits.
New York City Mayor Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, vowed over the weekend to shift funding from the city’s $6 billion police budget to youth and social services, though he didn’t say how much. Los Angeles Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti has vowing to reallocate $250 million from the city’s proposed 2020-21 budget to address health and education issues in black and Hispanic communities.
While some Democrats are joining activists in calling to defund police departments, many in the party are focused on embracing other reforms.
The legislation assembled by the Congressional Black Caucus and backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and others wraps together a flurry of bills endorsed by various lawmakers with a new focus on holding police officers more accountable for misconduct.
Rep. Karen Bass (D., Calif.), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus said Monday that she supported better funding for communities. Still, Ms. Bass was concerned the slogan “defund the police” could be a distraction.
—Catherine Lucey, Kristina Peterson and Joe Barrett contributed to this article.
Write to Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com.
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