Criminal Justice Reform Redux

If Defund the Police was the wrong strategy, what’s the right one?

Photo by Max Bender on Unsplash.

“In his State of the Union address this year, Joe Biden’s big headline-making line was when he said ‘It’s time to refund the police’ — it got big applause,” began journalist Bari Weiss during an April interview with New York City Mayor Eric Adams. “It’s what everyone was talking about.”

“Was that the Democratic Party, or the leadership of the Democratic Party, admitting that it let things go too far?” Weiss asked Mayor Adams. “And that all the talk, at least on the progressive wing of the party, about defunding or abolishing the police was foolish and has actually made the poorest Americans more vulnerable? Did you see that as a watershed moment?”

“Yes, I did,” Mayor Adams responded. “But I also felt that that was the second level of the watershed moment. The real watershed moment happened when I won the Democratic primary and then won the election in November.”

“But let’s be clear on something,” Adams added. “It was not the progressive wing of our party. It was the far-left wing of our party who are smaller in number, louder in voice, and that live, for the most part, on social media. And they believe they can govern through a tweet instead of governing on the streets, as I like to say.”