A national leader of the Democratic Socialists of America acknowledged on live television that her organization wants to abolish police and prisons—then attempted to escape when an NBC anchor asked the obvious question: What happens to a violent predator?
Frances Gill, a member of the DSA’s National Political Committee, appeared with NBC4 Los Angeles anchor Conan Nolan to discuss the organization’s agenda as socialist candidates gain influence inside the Democratic Party.
WATCH: A national leader with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) acknowledged on live television that the organization’s goal is to abolish police and prisons, but struggled to explain what would happen to a violent offender under that system.
During the interview, NBC 4… pic.twitter.com/svWn0SOsBj
— Bruce Snyder (@realBruceSnyder) August 10, 2026
NBC4’s Conan Nolan corners DSA’s Frances Gill on the group’s policing agenda after she acknowledges the goal includes defunding police and ultimately eliminating prisons and jails while replacing armed enforcement with alternative public safety systems#NYI pic.twitter.com/J3b4ORtocU
— NewYork-Insight (@NewYork_Insight) August 12, 2026
Nolan posed a scenario that cut through the movement’s academic language about “carceral forces,” “community care” and “collective liberation.”
If his daughter were assaulted and raped, he asked, what agency would investigate the crime? Who would locate and apprehend her attacker? And where would the offender be taken if prisons no longer existed?
Gill responded:
“I really want to avoid getting caught into these hypotheticals.”
But it is not a hypothetical to the women who are raped, families who lose loved ones to murder or neighborhoods terrorized by violent criminals.
It is also the first question any serious person should answer before advocating the elimination of the institutions currently responsible for investigating crimes, apprehending suspects and separating dangerous offenders from the public.
Gill was not being asked to defend an invented Republican talking point.
The DSA’s own National Abolition Working Group describes its mission in three blunt words:
“Defund. Abolish. Create.”
The organization’s published abolition platform says socialists must “constrain, diminish, and abolish the carceral forces of the state—from prisons and police themselves, to their manifestations in all forms throughout society.”
Its listed demands include:
“Defund the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets or scope of enforcement while cutting budgets annually towards zero.”
The platform also calls for “freedom for all incarcerated people” and investment in “community self-governance and care, not cops.”
This is not reforming police departments, ending qualified immunity or reducing sentences for nonviolent offenders. It is a declared plan to cut police budgets “towards zero,” abolish prisons and free everyone presently incarcerated.
When Nolan attempted to explore what that policy would mean for a rape victim, Gill suddenly objected to getting “caught” in a hypothetical.
Caught is an interesting word.
She was not caught by a trick question. She was caught by the inevitable consequence of her organization’s own platform.
Abolitionists generally argue that greater access to housing, health care, education and employment would reduce the social conditions that contribute to crime. There is a legitimate discussion to be had about prevention, rehabilitation and whether too many nonviolent offenders are incarcerated.
But none of those policies eliminates psychopathy, sexual violence, domestic abuse, organized crime or murder.
Even in the most prosperous society imaginable, some people will remain dangerous. A public-safety system must be capable of answering four basic questions:
- Who responds when violence occurs?
- Who investigates and collects evidence?
- Who apprehends the suspect?
- Where is a convicted violent offender confined?
Gill did not provide those answers.
And she is not the first DSA leader to run into this brick wall.
During a July appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” DSA national co-chair Megan Romer readily confirmed that the organization’s long-term program includes abolishing ICE, borders and prisons.
“True,” “absolutely” and “yep” came easily as Shannon Bream read through the agenda.
Then Bream asked about murderers, rapists and child predators.
Romer initially answered that eliminating poverty would dramatically reduce the prison population. Bream reminded her that she was not asking about property crimes or offenses driven by desperation.
“I’m talking about the really—you know, like the murderers and rapists,” Bream said.
Romer eventually acknowledged that “some people are not able to be functional members of society,” but declined to describe where they would be placed.
“What does that look like to keep the rest of us safe?” Romer asked. “I suspect it won’t look like the prison system as we know it today.”
So the DSA has spent years developing plans to abolish the current system but apparently has not reached the minor planning detail labeled: What do we do with the serial rapist?
That answer can come later, comrades. First, dismantle everything.
The organization has made clear that it does not view abusive or corrupt policing as the fundamental problem. It views police themselves as the problem.
“The problem is not police brutality,” the DSA declared in a 2024 national statement. “It’s the police.”
The statement continued:
“The police cannot be reformed.”
It called for “defunding and dismantling structures of policing and incarceration” and invited supporters to “fight for a world without police.”
All right. Then Nolan’s question must be answered.
If the police cannot be reformed and must disappear, who conducts a homicide investigation? Who executes a search warrant? Who chases an armed fugitive? Who arrives when a woman calls 911 while hiding from a violent former boyfriend?
“Community care” is not an answer when the community member approaching your front door has a knife.
Socialist abolition sounds wonderfully compassionate when discussed in a graduate seminar. Replace punishment with care. Replace police with social workers. Eliminate poverty, and crime will supposedly fade into the mist.
Then somebody asks about a rapist.
Suddenly the sweeping moral certainty disappears, and the public receives a lecture about unfair hypotheticals.
Nolan’s question exposed the central fraud of the abolition movement: It defines compassion almost exclusively from the offender’s perspective. The criminal justice system is portrayed as oppressive. Confinement is described as violence. Police intervention is treated as inherently suspect.
The woman being attacked tends to enter the conversation only when an interviewer insists upon it.
A society is entitled to reform its police and prison systems. It should punish misconduct, correct wrongful convictions and seek alternatives for people who do not threaten public safety.
But a society unwilling to restrain violent predators is not compassionate.
It is surrendering the innocent to the cruel.
WIRE SOURCES
- DSA National Abolition Working Group: “Defund. Abolish. Create.”
- DSA statement demands “a world without police”
- DSA co-chair defends proposals to abolish ICE and prisons
- DSA co-chair pressed on where murderers and rapists would go
- DSA’s 2026 national program
