Last week, when New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy announced a $9 million expansion of the state police, social justice activists who marched in the streets in 2020 to push for reallocating police funds were left with one question: Why?

“I’m baffled,” said Racquel Romans-Henry, policy director at the New Jersey nonprofit Salvation and Social Justice.

“We saw that in the midst of the protests of 2020, you had elected officials standing with advocates, declaring that they understand there's an issue and something must be done,” she continued. “And this insistence to put more police on the streets seems to really be a disconnect between what was said then and what we're seeing now.”

Activists say they mistakenly thought Democrats were convinced that a police-centered approach to public safety doesn’t work.

“For the past two years, we've had an acknowledgment from these very same politicians saying that we can't arrest our way out of societal problems,” said Zellie Thomas, a Black Lives Matter organizer from Paterson. “But it seems like hiring police officers are the only solution that politicians are committed to.”

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