Summary: Calls to change policing are not new. Pressure for major reform is also not new. But particularly since the killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota last month, the call to defund the police has come to the fore. To explain what that means and offer some idea of how it might play out in practice, The Agenda welcomes Lori Anne Thomas, criminal lawyer, president of Thomas Defence, and an instructor in the Ryerson University Law Practice Program; Akwasi Owusu-Bempah: assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto; and former Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant, who is now executive director and general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
