Hey y'all, this is Sam's Aunt Betty.

This week, what happens when you defile the police?

Alright, let's start the show.

You're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR.

I'm Sam Sanders.

So it's been just about a year since George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis last May.

And just about a year of protests all across the nation and the world, calling for police reform.

No justice! No peace! No peace!

And over that year, calls for reform have turned into calls to defund the police.

Not for the elders! Not for the elders! Not for the elders!

You know, so much of this conversation, of this movement, is felt national.

But the kind of reform activists they're asking for, a lot of it can't come from the federal government.

And anyway, the U.S. Congress seems to be a bit gridlocked on that front at the moment.

So today, we're going to see how the conversation around defunding the police is playing out locally.

We're going to Texas, Austin, Texas.

In Austin last year, there were a lot of actual calls to defund the police.

I mean, just in the course of, like, four days, my office, which is just one of the ten city council offices,

we got 20,000 calls and emails from different Austinites asking for us to really reimagine the way that our city budget is written.

That is Greg Kasada. He is a member of Austin's city council.

And it turns out Austin, perhaps more than any city in the country over the last year, has gone the furthest in defunding its police department.

Last summer, Greg created a plan to reduce Austin's police budget significantly, and it passed unanimously.

Things that were never possible before became what community members were demanding baseline period from their council members.

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