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Since the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020 and the subsequent mass mobilizations for , the .

Has this work had an impact in Canada? Have there been ?

The answer is complicated and depends on how you define success.

Raised awareness

Some argue the mobilization and movement-building that has transpired—people brought together in campaigns for police abolition that reimagine community safety—is a huge success in and of itself. .

Dozens of books have been published by academics, lawyers and activists, who have long argued .

There have been some .

, city council voted to cut the 2022 police budget increase by $10.9 million and reallocate the money to social services.

, a subcommittee of the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners has tabled a detailed and carefully researched report to city council on how the local police force could be gradually detasked and defunded.

When one looks further, however, what becomes apparent is a serious and growing . It's perhaps the strongest indication of the movement's success at undermining the sanctity of police budgets until now.

Counter-tactics

Police have fought vigorously against the defund movement if budgets are cut. They are co-opting calls for community safety, branding themselves as protectors in need of continuing or increased resources. They position themselves , .

One strategy police use is an offensive and personal tactic of removing people from positions of influence if they support police defunding.

When Winnipeg City Coun. Sherri Rollins critiqued police racism in March 2020, an informal complaint was lodged against her by the police board alleging she .

Similarly, in July 2020, another Winnipeg city councilor, Vivian Santos, discussed defunding and was ousted from the police board. when background checks turned up a friend with a criminal record.

Fear-mongering

Scare tactics are another strategy.

, only eight to 10 percent of calls to police involve violence. Despite acknowledging that a large proportion of the calls they receive , police maintain that reducing officers .

But which community is the police keeping safe? Instead of and mental health, police are demanding and receiving record funds to triage these programs themselves.

to run mental-health interventions while community organizations are starved through austerity and struggle to keep their doors open.

, activists from the Defund the Police Hamilton Coalition supported homeless people who were harassed daily by police and eventually violently evicted from their encampments.

The coalition demanded city council reallocate resources from police towards permanent housing, prioritizing the needs of the community over criminalizing homeless people. The organization's antidote to scare tactics is to focus on prevention and the fight to protect people over property.

Police culture as social problem

Police suggest ostensible reforms, such as unconscious bias training and body cameras, as a promise to change the "culture of policing." , , sidestepping the reality that .

With growing attention to their record of , systemic and their , police are on the defense.

Take, for example, the . The police brass may have to mince their words when responding to politicians and the public, but .

In June 2020, the Regina Police Association defended a tweet suggesting that its cultural unit, which works with Indigenous people, would be the first to go should the police be defunded. .

Also in June 2020, the Edmonton police chief similarly stated that defunding would . This threat to the employment of Black and Indigenous officers positioned the police as a benevolent force in the struggle for racial justice, .

Yet the charge in Canada to defund the police is being led by Black and Indigenous leaders and is .

What decreases harm?

The lack of "success" in police defunding is a sign of how vigorously police are fighting back, not a sign of a waning movement.

Over the past two years, police chiefs, police representatives and have mobilized the public resources they have to fight against the defund movement. But found 50 percent of Canadians under the age of 38 are interested in police defunding and abolition.

, contrary to what police might have the public believe.

What is radical and irrational is . What is radical and irrational is continuing to use criminalization and criminal law to deal with social issues and interpersonal harms when we know that .

Instead, citizens need to think openly about ways to address harms in our communities and neighborhoods and to to . Then we might truly live in .

At a time when , we must not let police tantrums get in the way of real safety and a . Nor can we accept the criminalization of poverty and inequality, which is the current alibi for how public police and the whole penal system stays in business.

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