From Budget Lines to Building Blocks: How Five Communities Defunded Police and Invested in Something Better

The phrase "defund the police" has been dissected, distorted, and debated for years. Lost in much of that noise is a quieter, more important story: in communities across the country, organizers have actually done it. Not symbolically. Not as a press release. They fought through city budget processes, council chambers, and ballot initiatives — and they won measurable reductions in law enforcement spending, with those funds redirected toward the infrastructure of genuine community safety.

What follows is not a theoretical argument. It is a field report. Each of these communities offers specific lessons about strategy, coalition-building, and the long, unglamorous work of translating a demand into a budget line.

1. Austin, Texas: A $150 Million Realignment

In August 2020, the Austin City Council voted to cut approximately $150 million from the Austin Police Department's budget — at the time, the largest such reduction in the country. Roughly one-third represented an immediate cut; the remainder was achieved by transferring functions like forensic science, internal affairs, and the municipal court to civilian oversight.

What worked: Austin's organizers, led in significant part by the Equity Action coalition and grassroots groups connected to communities of color on the city's eastern side, spent years building relationships with sympathetic council members before the political moment arrived. When it did, they were ready with specific policy language, not just demands.

What was harder than expected: State legislative backlash was swift. The Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 23 in 2021, which penalized large cities that reduced police budgets below a per-capita spending floor, effectively forcing Austin to partially reverse course. The lesson: local victories require simultaneous state-level defensive organizing to survive.

What was built instead: Funds were redirected toward a new mental health response program, an expanded violence prevention office, and a community-based street outreach initiative targeting youth at elevated risk of involvement in the justice system.

2. Los Angeles, California: The People's Budget and the Power of Sustained Pressure

Following the 2020 uprisings, the LA City Council initially approved a $150 million reduction to the LAPD's budget. While subsequent budget cycles partially restored some of those funds under pressure from the mayor's office, the organizing campaign that produced the initial cut — centered on the People's Budget LA coalition — permanently shifted the terms of the city's budget conversation.

What worked: The People's Budget LA coalition, which included more than 100 organizations, produced a concrete counter-budget that specified exactly where reallocated funds should go. This transformed the campaign from an oppositional stance into an affirmative governing vision, making it far harder for opponents to dismiss.

What was harder than expected: The LAPD's budget is deeply embedded in city charter provisions and union contract obligations, meaning that even significant headline reductions can be offset by overtime spending, pension obligations, and contractual minimums. Organizers learned that the official budget number and the actual resource flow to policing can diverge substantially.

What was built instead: Increased investment in the city's Department of Mental Health, expanded housing navigation services, and new funding for youth jobs programs in historically over-policed neighborhoods.

3. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Navigating the Aftermath of a Failed Charter Amendment

Minneapolis offers perhaps the most studied case in the defunding landscape — and the most instructive failure. The 2021 ballot measure that would have replaced the Minneapolis Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety was narrowly defeated. Yet the organizing infrastructure built around that campaign produced lasting results.

What worked: Even without the charter amendment, years of sustained pressure resulted in the reallocation of millions of dollars toward mental health co-responder programs, violence interrupters, and community-based safety infrastructure. The city's Office of Violence Prevention was significantly expanded.

What was harder than expected: Fear-based messaging from opponents — amplified during a period of genuine community anxiety about rising violent crime — proved difficult to counter without sustained, proactive communications strategy. Organizers identified this as a critical gap: the campaign won the policy argument but lost the narrative war.

What was built instead: Expanded deployment of the city's mental health co-responder teams, new investment in the Group Violence Intervention program, and increased funding for community land trusts addressing housing instability.

4. Portland, Oregon: Incremental Wins Inside a Hostile Political Environment

Portland's path has been neither linear nor clean. The city council's 2020 decision to cut $15 million from the Portland Police Bureau's budget, while eliminating the Gun Violence Reduction Team and the School Resource Officer program, was followed by years of political turbulence, including a new city charter and shifting council compositions.

What worked: The elimination of school resource officers — a demand that local youth organizations had pursued for years — held. The funds were redirected toward community-based school support services. This single, concrete win demonstrated that sustained organizing around a specific, bounded demand could produce durable results even within a volatile political environment.

What was harder than expected: Portland's experience underscored the vulnerability of budget reallocations that are not codified in ordinance or charter. Funds redirected through annual budget processes can be quietly clawed back in subsequent years without triggering the same level of public attention that the original cut generated.

What was built instead: Expanded investment in the Portland Street Response, a civilian-led alternative response program for non-violent 911 calls involving people experiencing mental health crises or houselessness.

5. Ithaca, New York: A Small City with an Outsized Blueprint

Ithaca, a small upstate New York city of roughly 30,000 residents, drew national attention in 2021 when Mayor Svante Myrick proposed replacing the city's police department with a new Department of Community Solutions and Public Safety — a civilian-led agency that would have included a small contingent of armed responders alongside unarmed community service officers.

What worked: The proposal demonstrated that abolition-adjacent governance models could be articulated in concrete, operational terms. The detailed policy framework produced by Ithaca's process became a resource for organizers in other cities.

What was harder than expected: County government opposition and police union resistance stalled full implementation. The city ultimately moved forward with a more modest restructuring. The experience highlighted the importance of securing county-level alignment before launching municipal campaigns that require regional cooperation.

What was built instead: An expanded community service officer program, new investment in mental health crisis response, and a community advisory board with formal authority over police accountability processes.

The Replicable Lessons

Across these five communities, several strategic principles emerge consistently:

• Lead with the affirmative vision. Campaigns organized around what will be built — not only what will be cut — are more durable and harder to caricature.
• Codify wins in ordinance. Budget allocations that live only in annual appropriations are fragile. Structural changes require structural anchoring.
• Build state-level defense simultaneously. Local wins are vulnerable to state preemption. Organizing cannot stop at city limits.
• Prepare for the narrative fight. Opponents will use fear. Campaigns need proactive communications infrastructure, not just policy arguments.
• Name the specific programs. Demands tied to concrete, named alternatives — a mental health response team, a violence prevention office, a youth employment fund — are far more politically defensible than abstract reallocation language.

The communities profiled here did not achieve abolition. They achieved something more modest and, in many respects, more instructive: proof that the carceral budget is not immovable, that organized communities can redirect resources toward genuine safety, and that the work of building something better is already underway.