EDITOR: Based on my research for my PhD dissertation in 1970 on 43 years of homicide in Detroit, I subsequently published an article on homicide and the family in which I concluded this was not a police problem but a social work problem.

The idea was not very popular at the time. I didn’t refer to it as “defunding the police” but I might have called it “re-functioning the police.”

After 50 years, the idea seems to be getting some traction.

— James Boudouris, via letters@sentinelcolorado.com