I expected this book to talk more about the pathways to defunding the police and the alternatives to the police than what was given in this book. I appreciate the author touching on that note at the end of the book. I do agree that it is hard to know what will work instead of police. However, I think that there were great aspects in the book that she could have dug into more.

For example, the community based approaches that have had huge reductions in violence in their respective communities sound incredible. I wish we heard more specifics about that other than that they were lead by members of their community. I think it would have been worth inserting anecdotes as to how the community member identified what would work for their respective communities, how they knew their approach worked, and how they modified their approach when it did not.

My personal opinion is that we need more social workers and community resources, and should take that money from funds we use for police. The author does touch on this resource point but, I would have loved to have read more about that working, even if it was not in the US.

I would highly recommend for those who are wondering WHY we should defund the police. However, I do not think it is particularly groundbreaking for those who are already convinced that we should defund the police.

DNF’ed. I didn’t connect to this story in the way that I anticipated that I would. I adopted my first cat while in law school and I thought I would love a book that talks about how cats heal us.

Instead it took me months to get through more than 50% of this book. I did not enjoy the way that some of the cats were treated or cared for.