Eddie Glaude Jr: Defunding Police Is a ‘Justice Reinvestment Movement’

Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. argued on Tuesday that defunding police departments could be a chance to seriously change justice in the United States by reinvesting funds in areas such as public safety and communities.

Glaude explained to MSNBC’s Morning Joe how Democratic candidate Joe Biden might approach the issue. Co-host Willie Geist wondered if it was a politically dangerous position.

“It can be politically, Willie, but it also reveals that we are just simply in the eye of the storm,” Glaude said.

“That the divisions in the country are going to be made manifest as we continue to try to imagine a new America. Let’s be clear, we have examples of disbanding police departments, one just recently in 2017 in Camden, New Jersey, and we have reports even in the New York Times about the way in which that move has impacted the notion of public safety, the experience of public safety in that very troubled city in some ways.”

“And what’s troubling about Joe Biden’s response and Jim Clyburn’s response is that they’re not dealing with the substance of the claim, they’re thinking about the politics and the optics, right. It seems to me that Biden needs to be very, very clear that what defunding is about is a justice reinvestment movement, redirecting funds.”

“To think about policing in the context of tough on crime, police in the context of the war on drug has led to an explosion of budgets. 54% of the budget in Los Angeles. We can go on and on. But when we think about public safety in a different way, not within the context of the War on Drugs or tough on crime or the criminalization of a particular set of communities.”

“When we begin to think of public safety more broadly, we want to reinvest those monies in education, mental health, in social work, in housing, and a range of policies that are not funded at the same level. And hat seems to me something that Joe Biden should embrace. So he might want to distance himself from the slogan, but he shouldn’t distance himself from the substance of the policy it seems to me.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.