Defund the police: perceptions from 2020 to 2022

Abstract

Public outcry following the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black citizens in the summer of 2020 resulted in a call to shift funding away from police departments and towards social services. While previous research has examined perceptions of the defund movement, most of this research has focused on perceptions in 2020. This thesis extends prior work by examining changes in perceptions from 2020 and 2022. This was done by analyzing 1,100 reader comments on articles regarding defunding the police from five Minneapolis news sources. Overall, I found that perceptions of the defund the police movement did not change substantially from 2020 to 2022. Across both years, there was a lack of explicit support for defund the police and modest support for police reforms. While there were some shifts in commenters’ perceptions of blame and their concerns from 2020 to 2022, overall comments centered on fears of crime and employed colorblind arguments to express their disapproval of defunding the police. These findings are not consistent with prior public opinion polls (Gallup, 2022; Pew Research Center, 2022) and thus point to the complexity of attitudes towards police. This is significant as it may help predict future support for policing and police reform movements. ☐ Keywords: defund the police, perceptions, content analysis, critical race theory