Of the citizens’ movements calling for a reduction in the Police budget and for the repeal of some or all of the police, they have announced that the Biden administration will not lose police violence.

The Defund the police movement gained political and media strength in May last year, when the Minneapolis Police killed George Floyd, whom he refused to leave. Austin or Seattle have been some of the last cities to change municipal budgets. To this end, the existing police funds have been reoriented. In the case of Austin, the money has been used to purchase and maintain a hotel where homeless people are housed. According to the El Salto medium, “these cuts are relatively small when compared to the countries of the year with the $100 billion spent on police, but they are a big step forward, a change of trend.”

The author of the essay The End of the Police (Captain Swing, 2021), sociologist Alex Vitale, explains the meaning of the movement as follows: “The Defund the Police movement is an expression of not wanting to channel problems through police reforms. I don’t think this police system can be reformed.” “Even when the police are acting under direct procedures, in most of the situations in which it is applied, many people have said it is still a wrong tool,” the sociologist stresses.

The alternatives represent a radical change in public security. They are not looking for a better policeman, but for another political vision, supported by a social boost to the budget. In Vitale's words, "it's not about replacing the police with other organizations that reproduce their work, but about meeting the challenges we have in each community. Find out what kind of problems exist, whether there is juvenile violence, drugs, burglaries or school absenteeism. Everyone is going to need a kind of solution."

Initiation to the movement

In the summer of 2014, Agent Darren Wilson shot 18-year-old Michael Brown, and it was known that Wilson was not going to be prosecuted. So Obama decided to do something politically to solve the Police problem. The result was a committee of experts that, months later, issued 59 recommendations. It seemed the Police's mortality could be reduced, but it wasn't. If we analyze data for the year 2021, in a month and a half there have been 98 cases of murder in the Basque Country.