Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Calls for Defunding of Police Departments

Patrisse Cullors, a TV writer on Freeform's 'Good Trouble,' describes the ongoing protests as "a human reaction to a deeply unstable and dysfunctional relationship to a country that has dehumanized us for centuries."

Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, is not merely an activist — she's a modern-day abolitionist. And as protests over racism, inequality and police brutality have exploded worldwide, Cullors says the answer does not lie in holding police accountable with better training and body cameras. Instead, she demands defunding law enforcement so that black and brown people can be free from what she calls a "well-funded army" that "occupies" them. (In the city of L.A.'s proposed 2020-21 budget, 54 percent of municipal funds would go to the LAPD.)

"For hundreds of years, black communities have lived under state terror — be it police or vigilante violence," says Cullors, who also is an artist, a television writer (Freeform’s Good Trouble) and author of the 2018 New York Times best-seller When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir. "An abolitionist believes in a world where police and prisons are no longer weaponized as a tool for public safety."

THR first spoke with Cullors, 36, just after video emerged of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery being shot to death while jogging in Georgia, and again on May 31, after the heart-rending video of George Floyd, 46, being suffocated to death in broad daylight at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer went viral. Cullors, who spoke at a May 30 rally in L.A.'s Pan Pacific Park, describes the ongoing protests as "a human reaction to a deeply unstable and dysfunctional relationship to a country that has dehumanized us for centuries."

Cullors has been particularly active in recent months. In L.A.'s March 3 primary, Measure R, which creates increased authority to independently investigate corruption in the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, passed with more than 67 percent of the vote, with Natalie Portman, John Legend and Ava DuVernay among its high-profile supporters. "Patrisse has been extraordinarily effective in making actual change,” Portman tells THR. “She is both eloquent in articulating the situation and effective in creating solutions."

Also in March, Cullors formed the Justice-LA COVID-19 Response, a coalition demanding that L.A. County officials relieve overcrowding in jails and limit arrests to help protect inmates. After a petition campaign, the Sheriff’s Department lowered the jail population from 17,000 to a little less than 12,000, and by May, COVID-19 tests became available for all inmates. But, Cullors says, that's not enough. “This is not hyperbolic. Everyone knows that prisons are a petri dish for COVID-19,” she says. “We know for a fact that we can reduce the population by probably another 6,000 if the sheriff's department really wanted to.

She adds that if Hollywood wants to help, they can support Black Lives Matter-LA, Reform L.A. Jails and Justice-LA. and she supports voting out incumbent Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey and voting in her progressive challenger George Gascon.

Cullors grew up in L.A., where the men in her family experienced police brutality firsthand. In 1999, her brother, Monte Cullors, who suffers from mental health issues, began cycling in and out of prison. He says Sheriff’s deputies severely beat him at Pitchess Detention Center after he was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. (On June 3, the Broad released a performance-piece video in which Cullors pays tribute to Monte.) Ten years later, Cullors' father died, just months after being released from prison.

Ms. Cullors, please hear me out.

You have called for the national defunding (by which you apparently meaning disbanding) of police departments. Let's try a simple experiment.

After a period of one month in which any and all weapon control laws are suspended in a specific, defined location (such as within the boundaries of Minneapolis), I propose to enact a 24-48 hour moratorium on any and all policing of criminal behavior. The prelude period allows both the bad actors and the innocent to arm up or otherwise prepare for the pending purge (to reference a popular recent series of movies).

In the locale selected for the experiment, any and all acts will be responded to by crickets - outside the response provided by the residents themselves. Any act, no matter how benign or heinous will be "legal". No investigations of what happened afterward can produce any indictments, because any and all acts are legal within the boundaries for the duration of the purge. Any reprisals afterward will be met with the full force of current law.

Now, and this is the sweetest part, any individual who has, by name, signed onto the idea of disbanding police departments across the nation MUST be within a 2 mile diameter circle of the defined area's center for the duration of the purge. That means that you, and any others who publicly espouse this ideal, will be within the confines of the center of the experiment. You may bring with you as many friends (human and armament) as you wish, but you may not leave the affected area.

Keep in mind that the building codes and permitting processes are not suspended before hand - you may not construct a new bunker for your protection. You may only prepare to defend yourself.

Also keep in mind that the weapon procurement laws are only suspended for the prior month for residents of the affected zone. You had best be sure of your allied in this endeavor.

After the experiment, we will decide its outcome by three separate but equal mechanisms. First, the number of dead will be totaled, tabulated by race, or by ethnicity, or by "color of uniform" (or lack of uniform). The winner is the race with the least casualties.

Second, the destroyed properties, including those abandoned by productive citizens permanently, will be tabulated by race/ethnicity/uniform, with the winner being the group that managed to suffer least.

Finally, each survivor of the purge, at their own discretion, will be tabulated by race/ethnicity/uniform regarding whether such "policing" arrangement is viable. The winner will be the side (abolish the police versus reform the police protection system) with the most votes. This will not be tabulated by ethnicity/race/uniform. It shall be the mobocracy rule you apparently crave.

Because this proposal requires you to put your own skin in the game, Patrisse (may I call you Patrisse?), what say you?

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