On Tuesday's BizTalk interview, Wilmington City Councilman Kevin Spears discussed his thoughts on the protests, race relations in Wilmington and his views on what's next from the city.

"I serve in a different role now," said Spears, who was elected to the council for the first time in November. "I'm still an activist, but I'm also a city councilman. A lot of times I'm -- I think -- closer to the perspective of the people. But I also have to factor in where I stand is being a government leader."

In the wake of daily protests in Wilmington, sparked locally and around the country by the killing of George Floyd while in police custody on May 25 in Minneapolis, Spears said he and other council members have received a number of messages from residents, something he encouraged should continue.

"And then I always say tangible things," he said, "like really low-hanging fruit; something that you don't have to wait [until] the next election or next year to see, something that you can see take place in the next month or two. These are things that we need to be shooting for."

In other cities, some protestors have begun calling for city governments to defund -- or move funding and law enforcement responsibilities off social service and mental health-related calls -- to outright dismantling local police departments, arguing that incremental changes have not worked.

The calls increased after nine of the 13 members of Minneapolis' city council said Sunday that they plan to vote to disband the police department there.

"I need a clear understanding of what defunding means. To me the word is strong. It makes me think that you want to disband the police department. That's not a feasible thing," Spears said Tuesday. "And so I think a better word or better term is repurposing the funds for policing ... In government, if there's a community initiative that we could still have funding for police and community, but the community needs to bring an initiative to government to have that done.

"But I will say one thing that makes sense: demilitarizing the police department," he continued. "I don't think we need tanks, and I don't think we need automatic assault rifles when we're dealing with regular citizens ... I think we need to put a little more thought into these things as we go forward and we think of how we want policy to change."

(The Business Journal's sister publication, WILMA magazine, held a panel talk Monday with female leaders about race and the community. Click here to see that talk.)

View the full conversation with Spears below.