House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn is pushing back on Democratic calls to “defund the police” after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
“Nobody is going to defund the police,” the South Carolina Democrat said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “We can restructure the police forces. Restructure, reimagine policing. That is what we are going to do.”
Clyburn’s push back differs from more liberal calls to replace policing as it’s known with a new form of public safety or even to abolish police departments altogether.
Police reform has been the forefront of national discussion following Floyd’s death. In Minneapolis, the city council agreed to begin the process of dismantling its police department and creating a new kind of public safety system with community input. House Democrats also unveiled a reform bill that would create a national reporting base and ban police use of chokeholds.
“The fact of the matter is that police have a role to play,” Clyburn said. “What we’ve got to do is make sure that their role is one that meets the times, one that responds to these communities that they operate in.”
Clyburn, the highest-ranking black lawmaker in Congress, also touched on the history of policing and its relationship with the black community, saying he remembers when the first black policeman was hired, an uncommon occurrence when he was growing up.
He also condemned the police shooting of unarmed black man Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta last week. The officer has since been fired, and the police chief voluntarily resigned after the incident.
“This did not call for lethal force,” Clyburn said. “I don’t know what’s in the culture that would make this guy do that. It has got to be the culture, it’s got to be the system.”
