A new era for police reforms

Soon after George Floyd was brutally killed in the United States, Black Lives Matter and its sub-movement defunding the police was quickly adopted by Canada. As defunding the police is a relatively new concept in Canada, and there are many controversies around the meaning of defunding the police, the current research seeks to gain a deeper understanding of the movement in an exploratory manner with the intention to provide the public with some valuable insights about the movement. In particular, the current research asks how Canadian police agencies have approached defunding the police after the death of George Floyd. Based on Williams and Eichenthal (2020), the present research operationalized the three most common approaches used to defund the police. Conducting a secondary analysis of government archives and media publications, Canadian police agencies’ policies and actions of defunding the police were classified into the three operationalized approaches for further analysis. Three agencies were identified to have approached defunding the police in Canada. Throughout the analysis, the current research was able to identify the weaknesses of the actions taken to defund the police in Canada and the potential problems of movement. Proceeding to the future, policymakers and the people must pay close attention to these potential problems in order to achieve the complete success of defunding the police.