What If We Just Stopped Calling the Cops?

By Emma Ockerman at Vox
Illustration by Grace Shin/VICE News

George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police Department Officer Derek Chauvin one year ago today, an event that spurned the largest mass uprising the globe has even seen and bringing the conversation about defunding, abolishing, and divesting from police to the center of American politics. On the occasion of the anniversary, SURJ’s Chapter Network Coordinator Misha Viets van Dyk spoke with VICE about equipping communities to stop calling police:

While the dialogue about when it’s appropriate to call the police and if they really keep people safe isn’t new, it’s a conversation that some white communities seem increasingly willing to join.

Misha Viets van Dyk, the national chapter network organizer for Showing Up for Racial Justice, which organizes white communities for racial and economic justice, said their organization saw a “giant wave” of white people concerned about police accountability this past year.

“As people learn about their own background or the backgrounds of people around them, they see more and more reasons why putting their trust into this institution of policing is one that harms us,” Viets van Dyk said. 

A Gallup poll conducted after Floyd was murdered last summer found that Americans’ confidence in the police had slid to a record low of 48 percent, the first time in nearly 30 years without a majority.

Read more here.

Scroll to Top