Black and blue: deconstructing Defund the Police

Abstract

ABSTRACT The demand to address police racism by ‘defunding the police’ echoed on- and offline in the summer of 2020 following the police murder of George Floyd, but it has not always been clear what defunding the police entails. Through an analysis of 300 stories posted on CBC News and CTV News websites in 2020–2021, this study addresses the construction of the Defund the Police campaign in Canadian news media. Black Lives Matter organized their Defund the Police campaign as a demand for: (1) alternatives to police services; (2) decriminalization; and (3) disarmament, demilitarization and technology. Yet, news media prioritized calls for alternatives to police services, while providing less attention to disarmament, demilitarization and technology demands, and largely excluding decriminalization from defunding conversations altogether. The news media constructed the Defund the Police campaign around three fluid interpretations: defunding as a call to remove and abolish police, as a call for budgetary reallocation and alternatives to police, and as a call for police reform and accountability. Support for a reallocation and alternatives interpretation of defunding was most prominent within the news media, suggesting that police budget cuts in favour of community supports will be the focus of defunding policy in the future.