I think the whole conversation has been misleading. Very few places actually ‘defunded’ when one looks at the police budgets. Add in the economic turmoil and rising poverty, and crime rates are up everywhere, even in places that didn’t ‘defund.’

The NYPD has an ever-increasing budget that is larger than many militaries and that's reflected across America. Throwing money at police clearly doesn’t stop crime, so when it comes to ‘defund the police’ aka reallocating those resources into poverty-stricken cities and neighborhoods and taking a more proactive approach to prevent crime at the roots, I’m all for it. Abolish? I’m not there. But the last six decades have only seen the explosion of police budgets and that’s clearly not working, so I’m down for a new approach.

Thanks for the read and the thought-provoking words, Michelle.