King’s Radio Room: Tari Ajadi on defunding the police

According to Tari Ajadi, defunding the police is about putting power back in the hands of communities.

Ajadi is one of the main co-authors of the report Defunding the police: Defining the way forward. It was presented to Halifax regional council on Jan. 17, 2021. 

Ajadi is a doctoral student in political science at Dalhousie, junior fellow at Dalhousie’s MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance and a pre-doctoral fellow of Black Studies at Queen’s University.

Defunding is about more than just reducing the amount of money going to police, he said in a feature interview with the King’s Radio Room.

“It’s about reinvesting that money into broad-based models of community safety that don’t rely on enforcement and violence.”

The report presents 36 recommendations on what defunding police could look like in Halifax, from having wellness checks done by civilians to increasing public consultation on the police budget.

Ajadi said that while community members consulted in the report weren’t all in favour of defunding the police, they did believe some services would be performed more effectively by other agencies.

The report found a fairly broad consensus that police should not be involved in mental health calls.

Many people also agreed that it was necessary to invest more in infrastructure to reduce traffic and prevent injuries to pedestrians.

Listen to the full interview with The Signal’s John Marshall.