<em>The Atlantic Daily</em>: Police Abolition Is an Opportunity

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June’s protests saw a series of victories for advocates of police reform. But the national conversation is far from over, and calls for further overhaul continue.

Below, four writers weigh in the movement to defund the police—and offer their thoughts on how to best fix American policing:  

Police abolition is more than just firing cops.

Derecka Purnell, a human-rights lawyer, a writer, and an organizer, was once repulsed by the idea. She explains why she later changed her mind: “Abolition, I learned, was a bigger idea than firing cops and closing prisons; it included eliminating the reasons people think they need cops and prisons in the first place.”

Unbundle the police in Venice, California.

“You shouldn’t have to call 911 for problems related to homelessness,” Conor Friedersdorf, who once watched an LAPD officer kill a homeless man, argues.

Whistleblowers within police departments need better protections.

“Those who stand up to corruption, report negligence or abuse, or decline to comply with bad orders are frequently marginalized, demoted, or outright fired,” the sociology professor Musa al-Gharbi reports.