On the fourth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, Dr. Phillip Atiba Solomon, CPE Co-founder and CEO, spoke to PBS News Hour about the state of police reforms, including backlash to some of those reforms, and how public attitudes have changed. An excerpt from the interview:
So we have had some places that looked to literally abolish their entire police department and replace it with departments of public safety and some places that were making more incremental change. Some of the incremental change, like bans on choke holds, new pursuit policies, those have moved forward, and some of the attempts to reduce police budgets have maintained as well.
But I have to say, post the murder spike in 2021 and 2022, we found ourselves unable to maintain that broad-spread momentum. What we can say, the good news around this is, in multiple municipalities, there are example projects, things that move forward that people are looking at and saying, well, this could be the way that we make good on the moral imperative that came post-George Floyd and the political realities that came in the backlash of that.
Watch the full interview on the PBS News Hour website.