“So we have to have these conversations about how we are going to create policing that actually does what we need to do. And of course there are also people who talk about defunding the police. OK. And we can actually defund the police, but you just don’t take $15 million from the agency — and then we’ve got to figure out where it’s going — without taking the requisite number of tasks you’ve asked the police to do that they shouldn’t have been doing in the first place. I mean, let’s look at mental illness. A 16-hour course on mental illness does not make you an expert. Right? So if we are going to “de-fund” the police, we have to say ‘what are the tasks that the police should not have been doing in the first place?’”

On Sunday, February 21, 2021, Gayle Fisher-Stewart, author of Preaching Black Lives (Matter) and Interim Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church, where she is the founder of the Center for the Study of Faith in Justice, joined Mike Kinman in the Rector’s Forum at 10:00 a.m. to talk about her journey from police officer, to priest, to police abolitionist. Before becoming a priest Gayle spent 20 years working as a police officer for the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department.

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