Laurie Cumbo, a Black councilwoman from Brooklyn who is majority leader, compared calls to defund the police to “colonization” pushed by white progressives. Robert Cornegy Jr., a Black councilman also from Brooklyn, called the movement “political gentrification.”

This divide has widened in big cities across the United States, including in Minneapolis after Mr. Floyd was killed at the hands of the police.

Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, N.J., called defunding the police a “bourgeois liberal” solution for addressing systemic racism…

“You can’t just say, imagine if half the police force was gone,” Mr. Menchaca said. “You have to think about the things you get because of that.”