'Defund the Police': 5 times campus leftists came for law enforcement in 2020

Princeton University

Princeton University African-American Studies professor Naomi Murakawa lambasted the police reform debate, noting that the intention to “reform the police” usually means to “reward the police” as they allegedly “brutalize and kill.”

Murakawa also wrote that chokehold bans change the “technique of killing but not the fact of killing.” She compared police moving to new methods of restraining suspects — such as the use of stun guns — to executioners switching the noose for the electric chair.

Kaepernick Publishing, owned by former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, sponsored the article.

Stanford University

A Stanford University student group called “Abolish Stanford” occupied the university’s police station grounds in September. Stanford administrators empowered the students by meeting with them on the same day for a “reverse town hall.”

During their occupation, students demanded extensive healthcare coverage for Stanford community members, support for student immigrants, reparations for the local community, action to address gentrification, and “divestment from campus police.”

Abolish Stanford calls itself an “autonomous formation fighting for police abolition and total liberation at Stanford University.”

University of Florida

The University of Florida hosted an online panel to discuss modern policing. One panelist described the police as being a “violent institution” full of “violence workers.” Another panelist said that police “abuse and overuse the criminal justice system.”

“Policing wasn’t created for public safety,” said one Yale University professor contributing to the panel. “And so in many ways, the kind of violence we see today is not an aberration, or it’s not something that is outside of the scope of policing, it’s actually central to police work.”

Northwestern University

Roughly 150 protesters — including members of the Northwestern University group “NU Community Not Cops” — gathered in Evanston, Illinois, in late October. The protests caused dozens of property damage incidents and injured a police officer.

The mayor of Evanston wrote to the president of Northwestern University that the city would arrest any protester who harms or threatens harm to police officers, as well as damages public property. He also wrote that Northwestern students’ 30-day protest movement “is costing tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, in overtime,” and expressed a hope that Northwestern would help to cover the costs.

NU Community Not Cops told Campus Reform that “defacing property is not violence.” Rather, “Black and Indigenous and queer and non-binary death is violence. Policing is violence.” 

Because “abolition… refers to your interpersonal relationships,” the group does not “police anyone” in terms of their behavior during protests.

Purdue University and Indiana University

IUPUI — the merged institution from Indiana University and Purdue University campuses in Indianapolis — sent an email to students advertising a new course entitled “Defund the Police? Race, Policing, and Criminal Justice Reform.”

Screenshots of the email provided to Campus Reform show Director of Student Services Nicole Amonette explaining that the course would “explore the complex history of policing in America from early slave patrols through the civil rights era protest responses to modern-day policing, as part of a broader examination of the explosion of the American criminal justice system.”

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @BenZeisloft