Kane County Reporter

''Defund the police'' is an absurd slogan that has no real meaning, according to Kane County's Republican chairman.

“I haven't heard anybody intelligently explain what they mean when they use the term defund other than that it’s a catchy phrase,” said chairman Kenneth Shepro. “Does it mean we expect police to work for free? Does it mean we encourage vigilante policing? It's clearly an absurd slogan that has no real meaning. Does it mean we're not going to pay people who engage in police brutality?”

Black Lives Matter protestors have been gathering daily nationwide since Minneapolis police office Derek Chauvin pinned George Floyd, an unarmed black man, to the ground with his knee and strangled him to death May 25. Rallying cries that started as "No justice, no peace" have since evolved into chants of "Defund the police.”

“Our state's attorney issued a very eloquent statement about defund the police just this past week where he said the answer is that you need to reform police departments. You don't need to eliminate them, and I agree with him,” Shepro told the Kane County Reporter.

Kane County saw rallies in support of Floyd. On May 30 about 100 people rallied along state Route 38, carrying signs and chanting “Black lives matter,” according to media reports.

“I don't think anybody in high crime areas would like to have no law enforcement presence so I don't even know what that means,” Shepro said in the interview. “You're going to have anarchy without police and nobody is, in fact, going to defund the police. That would be unilateral disarmament. It’s an absurd concept and I don’t think anybody is in favor of it.”

Calls to defund the police come at a time when Chicago public schools, students, teachers and other community members rallied June 11 at Lincoln Park High School. They called for the the city to allocate less money to the Chicago Police Department and instead replace it with a civilian police accountability council, according to media reports. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, however, dismissed the idea.

“There would be nobody to respond to domestic violence or spousal abuse cases,” Shepro said. “Nobody to enforce orders of protection. Nobody to investigate street crimes against women or children. Defund the police is absurd. Nobody who says it has even remotely thought it through.”

Alderman Anthony Napolitano (41st Ward) proposed an alternative to entirely defunding the police in the form of a resolution that would remove police personnel from districts that don’t want policing and reallocate them to those that do. An alderman represents each of Chicago's 50 wards.

According to a copy of the resolution obtained by the Chicago City Wire, the temporary initiative will be submitted to the Chicago City Council next week and is positioned as an experiment.

The resolution states, “We, the members of the city council of the city of Chicago, gathered here this 17th day of June do hereby call upon Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Police Supt. David O. Brown to develop and submit for approval to the Committee on Public Safety a one-year CPD personnel and resource reallocation pilot program.”