The call to "defund the police" is a widespread response to police brutality and the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmuaud Arbery. It is now the foremost demand of the Black Lives Matter movement. Defunding the police is a call to strip the budgets and completely abolish local police departments, and in turn invest those resources into community services like education, medical access and social services. The idea is that when cities invest in community services, and people's needs are met safely, the need to call the police is drastically minimized. The defund movement moves beyond police reform, to completely rethinking the way that policing operates systemically, and calls for eventual abolition: a world without police or prisons, and one that is based on systems of safety and community accountability.

This is a recording of a UW panel event held 13 May 2021 exploring the problem of police violence as a public health problem, put on by the School of Public Health.