A DSA leader faced a tense on-air challenge over the push to abolish police and prisons during a Sunday interview on NBC 4 Los Angeles. Frances Gill, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America National Political Committee, was pressed by anchor Conan Nolan on what the party’s law-and-order agenda would mean in real life.
Nolan repeatedly asked Gill how public safety would work if police were defunded and prisons and jails were eliminated, including what would happen if a woman were assaulted or raped and what agency would investigate the crime. Gill said the goal was a future in which people are not dependent on armed enforcement for public safety. When Nolan returned to the practical question of who would find an assailant and where that person would be held, Gill agreed with the idea of ending prisons and jails but said she did not want to get trapped in hypotheticals. She shifted the discussion to what she described as the city spending “outrageous amounts on police and policing” instead of addressing street lighting, substance abuse treatment and mental health care.
