After police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, people across the country demanded racial justice and amplified a national movement to “defund the police.” During that time, several large cities and counties promised to restructure local police budgets with plans to rein­vest in community programs. But those promises have largely faded or reversed course completely. In Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, a majority of the City Council pledged to dismantle the police department and create a new department of public safety in its place. But come last November, voters rejected the idea, and during that November election, many voters across the country favored mayoral candidates who campaigned on public safety and were “tough on crime.”

Meanwhile the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act remains stalled in the Senate. The bill would have enacted sweeping federal police reform that would ban certain police techniques, including chokeholds and forms of potentially deadly force. It would have also ended qualified immunity, a legal provision that makes it difficult to sue police officers for any wrongdoing.

In order to make sense of these new efforts to refund local police departments, we talked with Philip Atiba Goff, Co-founder and CEO of the Center for Policing Equity, and a Professor of African-American Studies and Psychology at Yale University.