The brutal May 25 death of Mr George Floyd in Minneapolis has spawned a loud demand to “defund the police”, which has spread across the United States and the world on the backs of the popular street protests.

On the face of it, the demand to defund the police seems understandable because Mr Floyd’s death was one of many in which police officers in the US have been complicit over many years.

Mr Floyd’s ethnicity made matters worse, as the deaths of minorities in police custody normally fuel more rage, particularly because in many of the cases the actions of the police seem to be unjustified.

Online data portal Statista tells us that, “The trend of fatal police shootings in the US seems to only be increasing, with a total 429 civilians having been shot, 88 of whom were black, as of June 4, 2020.”

According to Statista, in 2018 there were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 the figure increased to 1,004. “Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 30 fatal shootings per million of the population as of June 2020.”

Equally, in the United Kingdom, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported last week that, of the 163 people who have died in or following police custody in England and Wales over the past 10 years, a disproportionate number was black or other minority ethnic groups.

“When you compare these figures to how much of the population these groups make up (as measured by the 2011 census), black people are more than twice as likely to die in police custody,” the BBC report stated.

Therefore, the call to defund the police resonates with people, especially those mostly affected by this culture of discrimination. However, the term ‘defund the police’ is most unrealistic, because it suggests, at first glance, a desire to rid societies of the agency mandated to ensure the preservation of law and order.

Indeed, that was the first impression generated by the Minneapolis City Council’s declaration on Sunday this week that it would disband its police department and invest in community-based public safety programmes.

While the details of that plan are yet to be made public, we suspect that the Minneapolis City Council, and any other local government authority of like mind, will have a re-think, because societies must be equipped with all the institutions needed to ensure orderly conduct.

Maybe what is needed in those jurisdictions is a reduction of dependence on the police to respond to problems that are more suited to social workers. What is clear, though, is that throwing more money at the issues where service is lacking — as seems to be the suggestion of some people in the US — cannot be the only remedy.

For, unless there is a deep commitment on the part of people trained, and who have the expertise to deal with these issues, the problems will continue. Equally, there needs to be a huge culture shift in the police forces in those jurisdictions — one that removes suspicion and bias from the minds of police officers each time they look at someone regarded as among the ethnic minority.

That shift, unfortunately, will take a long time.