Did Defunding the Police Actually Work? | The Gray Area

We ask whether “defund the police” improved public safety and land on a tougher answer: the slogan fails as a plan but succeeds as a warning sign about trust and broken systems. We argue that America keeps treating police as the default response to every social crisis, then blames them when the rest of the system collapses.
• defund as a signal of lost public trust rather than simple anti-cop hatred
• communities feeling over-policed for small issues and under-policed for serious violence
• police as a catch-all tool for mental health, homelessness, addiction, family conflict, and more
• the contradiction of demanding better policing while assuming less funding will deliver it
• why training, hiring, supervision, body cameras, and accountability systems cost money
• the difference between thoughtful proactive policing and harmful harassment
• officer pullback, why it happens, and why it cannot become a punishment to the public
• alternatives to policing, what has to be true for them to work at 3 a.m.
• the core claim that policing is downstream of a broader systems problem

Drop your thoughts in the comments, but keep it respectful. This topic deserves more than slogans.

#TheGrayArea #TwoCopsOneDonut #PoliceReform

Transcript

Did Defund Make Things Better?

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Did defunding the police actually make things better? Well, that depends on what you mean by better. If you mean did a slogan magically create safer neighborhoods, better trained cops, less bed shootings, more accountability, a better mental health response, and increased public trust between the police and the community? Then no. A slogan was never gonna do all that. But if you mean did the defun movement expose something real, yeah, it did. And it exposed the fact that a lot of cops, when they heard the word defun, they automatically translated that to they hate us, instead of hearing the warning underneath it. In that warning, they don't trust us anymore. And this is where the gray area is. This episode is not gonna be defun bad, cops good. That's lazy. The defun movement did not come out of nowhere. People were seeing viral videos of police use of force, bad shootings, lawsuits, settlements, bad cops keeping their jobs, militarized optics, massive police budgets. Communities felt under policed on the serious stuff and over-policed on the small stuff. So to some citizens, the defund movement didn't mean I hate every cop. It meant I do not trust the system, and the budget is the only lever that I feel I have left. And you don't have to agree with defunding to understand why people wanted to stop funding something they no longer trusted. But here's the other side: frustration is not a public safety plan. Taking money away from police does not automatically make better police. It does not automatically create alternatives, it doesn't automatically create accountability, it does not automatically make the person breaking into your house disappear. So

What The Movement Revealed About Trust

SPEAKER_00 1:46

today we're gonna talk about what DeFund got right, what it got wrong, what citizens need to understand, and what cops need to understand, and that America doesn't just have a policing problem, America has a systems problem. Police are society's catch-all tool. That's really what we are. Nobody knows what to do with the problem, send a cop. Somebody's having a mental health crisis, send a cop. Couple screaming at each other in the driveway, send a cop. You knock on the bathroom door at the gas station, somebody's passed out inside, send a cop. Lose a dog, send a cop, get in a car crash, send a cop. Drunk guy refusing to leave, send a cop. Teenager out of control, send a cop. Neighbor dispute over whose garbage can belongs on this side of the driveway, send a cop. Homelessness, addiction, trauma, family problems, school problems, traffic problems, violence, suicidal threats, and death notifications. Send a cop. And some act shocked when cops are involved in almost every ugly aspect of society. We put cops at the end of every social failure and then blame them when they cannot fix all of it. And look, I'm not saying police should be doing all that, but that is part of the problem. This is where society has asked cops to currently be. You want officers to be a lot of things, and I compiled a list that I'm gonna read off of all the things that I could think of. You want officers to be martial artists, firearms experts, mechanics, animal control, psychiatrists, psychologists, couples therapists, crisis negotiator, EMTs, professional drivers, emotionally intelligent communicators, constitutional lawyers, report writers, social workers, and somehow calm, polite, rested, patient, and mistake free at three in the morning. And when police aren't good at one of those jobs, people say, see, police are the problem. Well, yes, maybe sometimes they are. You'll get no argument from me on that. But maybe we built a society where police are the default answer to problems nobody else wants to handle. Now, here's

Police As Society’s Catch All Tool

SPEAKER_00 3:44

the contradiction. People want police to be trained in all of these roles. But then some people argue that taking money away will somehow make policing better. I challenge you to name a major policing problem that can be fixed by taking away funding. Training, supervision, hiring, retention. How about body cameras, crisis intervention training, de-escalation, report writing, better investigations, better leadership? Those things don't get cheaper because people are angry. So, yes, we should absolutely be asking whether or not cops should be handling everything. But until the replacement exists, people are still gonna call 911. And when they do, someone has to show up. Now, my cops, this is the part you need to hear. If your only takeaway from DeFund is people hate cops, you miss the warning signs. A lot of people supported DeFund because police departments were being rewarded no matter what happened. Bad shooting, budget still goes up. Lawsuit, taxpayers pay it, officer misconduct, maybe he gets fired, maybe you don't. Community complains for years, nothing changes. And then that same community hears, we need money. At some point, people start asking, money for what? More money for better training? More money for accountability? More money for the officers that actually know the community? Or more money for the same problems but with better equipment? That's not an unreasonable question. And I think police lose credibility when they act like it is. Some communities felt over policed for the small stuff and under policed for the serious stuff. They feel like cops are only there when it's time to write tickets or clear the corners or make stops and just handle the low-level stuff. But when shootings happen, when witnesses are scared, when domestic violence escalates, when people are begging for help, they do not feel protected. Now cops may disagree with that. Cops may say, that's not fair. You don't see what we're doing. You don't see the cause. You're not there for the arrest. You don't see how broken the court system is. And some of that is true. But trust is not built by telling someone their experience is wrong. To me, trust is built by taking their experience seriously, even when you think they're missing part of the picture.

When Slogans Replace Public Safety Plans

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Because here's the thing I figured out. The fund was not always about hating cops. For some people, it was the only lever that they felt they had left. They did not trust internal affairs, they did not trust the chief of police, they did not trust City Hall, they no longer trusted prosecution, they no longer trusted politicians, so they went after the budget. Because a budget is where a city shows its priorities. And again, you don't have to understand defund to understand why people wanted to stop funding something they no longer trusted. That sentence matters because if police can't understand it, that means we're not listening. But citizens need to understand something too. Anger cannot replace a system, and that is where defund started running into reality. Defund, abolish, back to blue, law and order. All of these slogans were great for t-shirts, yard signs, campaign slogans, and social media arguments. They are terrible public safety plans. Once the conversation became a slogan war, people stopped talking about outcomes. Citizens were told that the cops were the enemy, and cops were told reformers are the enemy. Politicians picked their teams and media got their clicks. Activists built brands and influencers got engagement. And regular people were left more divided, more suspicious, and less safe. But let me be clear, political rhetoric, it made things much worse. It did not create the trust problem by itself. Police cannot use the media or politics as an excuse to ignore real misconduct, bad culture, weak accountability, or the times that we have failed the public. That stuff was real before the slogans. At the same time, citizens can't pretend that a slogan is a plan just because the anger behind it is valid. Defund the police may have meant 10 different things depending on the person who said it. To one person, it meant fewer cops. To another person, it meant shifting some calls to a mental health worker. To another person, it meant abolishing the police completely. To another person, it meant I'm mad and I want something to change. That is the problem with slogans. They compress complicated issues into something somebody can chant but can't govern with. And public safety can't run on vibes. Public safety needs details. Who responds? Who pays for it? Who's trained? Who's accountable? Who shows up at three in the morning? Who shows up when it turns violent? Those are not slogan questions. Those are real-world questions. Here's

What Reform Actually Costs To Build

SPEAKER_00 8:28

where I think the defund conversation lost a lot of people. Because most of the things I hear citizens say they want from policing costs money. You want officers that can control people without immediately going to a higher level of force? That means defensive tactics training, grappling, scenario training, and repetition, and that costs money. You want better de-escalation? That costs money. You want body cameras? Costs money. You want better hiring so departments aren't scraping the bottom of that barrel. That costs money. You want to retain officers so you don't have brand new people training brand new people. That costs money. Some of the newer stuff, you want a crisis intervention team, costs money. You want better internal investigations, that costs money. You want better data systems, transparency portals, early warning systems, better dispatch, better records, better evidence handling. All of that costs money. Now, money does not automatically fix policing. Let's be honest about that too. There are departments that have wasted a lot of money. There are departments that have bought toys before training. There are departments that invested in equipment before culture. There are departments where leadership failed even with a healthy budget. So I am not saying just give police more money and everything will get better. That's not true. But starving training does not fix misconduct, understaffing does not fix patience. Burnout does not create emotional intelligence. Low standards, sure as shit, don't create better cops. And when officers leave because the job's miserable, dangerous, politically toxic, and just not worth it anymore, departments don't magically improve. They get younger, they get less experienced, they get more desperate, and desperate organizations make bad hires. So the real question should not be should police get more money or less money? The real question is, what are we buying? Are we buying better training, better supervisors, better accountability, better alternatives, better leadership, better outcomes? Because if the answer is no, then yeah, citizens have every right to ask why the budget keeps growing. But if the answer to bad policing is simply take money away, then we're pretending punishment is the same thing as reform, and it is not. Now

Pullback Policing And The Gray Area

SPEAKER_00 10:41

let's talk about something uncomfortable. When officers feel hated, under-resourced, unsupported, and politically abandoned, a lot of them pull back. Some of that is wrong. Let me say this clearly. If you're still wearing a badge, you still owe the public service. You don't get to punish the neighborhood because you feel disrespected. You don't get to ignore victims because you're mad at City Hall. You don't get to stop caring because Twitter was mean to you. That is not professional. But is pullback predictable? Absolutely. Because cops are human beings. And when a human being feels like every decision they make can destroy their career, their family, their reputation, and their freedom, they start making fewer decisions. They stop making stops. They stop getting out with suspicious people. They stop being proactive. They go call to call, they clear the call, and they avoid risk. And some people hear that and they say, good, that means fewer bad stops. And sometimes, yes, less bad proactive policing is a good thing because bad proactive policing destroys trust. But no proactive policing can destroy neighborhoods. Both can be true. There's a difference between constitutional, thoughtful, intelligence-led proactive policing and just jumping out on somebody because they look out of place. There's a difference between targeting violence and just harassing everybody. There's a difference between presence and occupation. And communities understand that difference better than any politician will ever do. Most people do not want to be harassed, but they also don't want the corner controlled by the most violent person in the neighborhood. They don't want their kids stopped for no reason, but they also don't want bullets coming through their window. They do not want abusive policing, but they don't want absent policing. That is the gray area. Bad proactive policing destroys trust, but no proactive policing can destroy neighborhoods. And when the only options we give people are aggressive policing and no policing, we've already failed. So

Alternatives Sound Great Until 3 AM

SPEAKER_00 12:43

if police should not handle everything, who does? That is the question every defund conversation has to eventually answer. And I mean really answer. Not emotionally, not politically, practically. If someone is suicidal at three in the morning, who shows up? If someone is screaming in traffic and walks into a car, who shows up? If a family calls because their adult son is in crisis and he has a knife, who shows up? If a homeless person is freezing outside of a business and refuses help, who shows up? If a domestic argument sounds nonviolent until somebody grabs a weapon, who shows up? If a mental health professional gets there and it becomes unsafe, who shows up? I'm completely open to alternatives. In fact, I think we need them. There are calls police should not be the primary answer for. There are mental health calls where a clinician would be better. There are homelessness issues where outreach workers would be better. There are addiction issues where treatment would be better. There are school issues where a counselor would definitely be better. There are neighborhood disputes where a mediation team would be much better suited. But better in theory is not the same as available in reality. Are those people funded? Are those people trained? Are those people staffed? Are they available overnight? Are they even willing to go? Are they protected? Are they accountable? Can they respond fast enough? And what happens when the call is not what dispatch thought it was? Because that happens all the time. The caller says it's one thing, the scene is a completely different story. The notes say that it's a verbal argument, we get there and it's a felony assault. The notes say it's a mental health crisis, we get there and it's a person with a weapon. The notes tell us it's a suspicious person, and we get there and it's a person having the worst day of their life. That does not mean the cops need to handle everything. That means replacement has to be real. Reform without replacement is just a gap, and gaps will be filled by whoever's willing to show up. Right now, that's just police, and that's not because police are the best tool for every job. It's because police are the tool that exists 24-7-365. It's not a defense of the system, that's an indictment of the system.

Systems Problem And Shared Accountability

SPEAKER_00 14:51

America keeps using police as an emergency room for every social failure. Mental health system fails, police. School fails, police, housing fails, addiction treatment fails, police. Families in court fail. Get the cops. And when the police can't fix all that, everyone acts shocked. That is why I say America doesn't have just a policing problem. America has a systems problem. So did defunding the police make things better as a complete public safety plan? No. Because it was never complete. Defunding the police did not shrink what the people expected police to do. It shrinked the capacity for police to meet those expectations. But as a warning sign? Yeah. It warned police that public trust was a lot lower than departments wanted to admit. It warned politicians that communities were tired of writing blank checks without results. It warned citizens that anger alone does not build infrastructure. And it warned everybody that you cannot solve a system's problem by yelling a slogan louder than the other side yells theirs. The defund side was right about one major thing, and that's that police should not be the answer to every problem. The police side was right about one major thing. You cannot expect officers to do 15 different jobs with less training, fewer people, worse morale, and no backup plan. Citizens, you need to be honest. If you want accountability, you need to fund them, staff them, build them, and hold them accountable too. You cannot just say, not police and call that a plan. Cops, you need to be honest. If people don't trust you, you don't get to deflect and dismiss and blame it on politics or the media. You have to ask what happened, what you can control, and what you're willing to do to change. Politicians, you need to be honest. Stop hiding behind slogans. Stop promising reform without funding it. Stop cutting ribbons for programs that aren't available at three in the morning. Or how about stop blaming cops for every system's failure while refusing to build the systems that would prevent cops from having to show up in the first place? And police leaders, you need to be honest as well. With more money needs to come, more accountability. If you want the public to support your funding, then you need to show them what you're buying. Show them better training, supervision, discipline, hiring, outcomes. Because trust us is not enough anymore. And honestly, maybe it never should have been in the first place. People do not call a slogan when somebody's breaking into their house. They call 911. And when they do, someone has to show up. Someone trained, someone supervised, someone calm, someone capable, accountable, someone worthy of the authority they carry. So did defunding the police make things better? Not by itself. But it did expose a bigger truth. We keep expecting police to stand at the end of every social failure and then blaming them when they can't fix it all. That does not mean that police get a pass. It means that the rest of the system does not get a pass either. That is the gray area, and that is the conversation that we should have been having the whole time.