As protesters continue to meet a massive police presence on the streets of New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city council are under pressure to defund the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and reduce its power. Momentum is building for cuts — the question is how substantial those cuts will be.

The uprising in response to the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis is pressing cities and institutions across the country to defund police departments and reinvest in social programs in working-class communities and communities of color. The demand is rooted in the belief that years of new training, body cameras, and attempts to discipline “bad apples” has failed to address what activists say is the root problem: that the criminal justice system is historically rooted in class and racial control and empowers officers to abuse and kill. No amount of retraining, these activists argue, can change this fundamental function of the police. What’s needed is a defunding of police and a shifting of those public resources toward an entirely new approach to public safety.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti announced the city would cut $100–150 million of the city’s police department budget. This followed the Minneapolis school board’s vote on Tuesday to end its contract with the police department and the University of Minnesota’s recent commitment to scale back its ties with the police.