Probably gonna get a ton of hate for this... please look at my comments to see full thing.

So, I have seen a ton of memes about “defunding the police”. Please hear me out before jumping to conclusions. First off, the term “defunding the police” is the worst name for it and is entirely misleading. What they mean is not getting rid of police. No one wants that and the idea is absurd. What they mean, is to take some of the money that is funding police stations and give them to other social services (homeless shelters, addiction help, mental health services). Police deal with a lot of problems daily that in the grand scheme of things they should not have to deal with, and it is a lot on their plate. So instead of sending a police officer (who is trained to arrest people and look at crime scenes, deal with civil disputes, etc) to a call about a homeless person/drug addict/mentally ill person, send in someone who’s job is specifically made to help these people! these service can’t help them because these services receive a pathetic amount of money, I’m comparison to police officers who end up getting thousands of dollars in military style gear, which make them look like an invading army instead of someone you can trust to help you in a time of need… again, doubt this will change anyone’s mind but I figured I had to try. Probably going to get a lotta hate.

No hate from me. You have every right to believe, and post whatever you want.

Defunding the police is one thing, assuming their non-law enforcement duties are proportionally reduced, which I'm inferring is a point you're trying to make, but I'm not 100% certain.

I think you're wrong when you say no one wants to get rid of the police. In Minneapolis, there's a strong movement to abolish the police, which means just that. I live in California, where there's also a lot of talk of abolishing the police. So clearly there are some people who want to do that.

btw, the police clearly need that "military style gear" as is evidenced by the violence being showered upon them over the last two weeks. Or does defunding the police somehow mean the bad cops will stop doing what this bad cop did? (with the net result being no more riots and violence?)

I'm glad to know that cops (the good cops, at least) are provided the gear they need to protect lawful protesters, and law abiding citizens, and themselves.

Yes. I agree that, sadly, the police need the military gear because of the state of the world. And I also know that a lot of people On both sides think that de-funding the police means getting rid of them and support that, which is wrong because obviously we need them in society or else everything would go to hell in a month.

I heard that Camden, NJ, about 8 years ago, decided to completely tear down their police force and rebuild it from scratch. If what I heard is true (heard it on the radio... so it must be true!) their costs are way down, and so are most categories of crime, including murder.

If true, maybe that process is one that should be considered for similar size cities, or adapted to larger or smaller cities? I don't know much about Camden, NJ, so I thought I'd do some quick checking on the always reliable interwebs for some details. As soon as I started typing Camd... the text "camden nj police" auto populated. So clearly it's something people are investigating, probably because of the current mess our country finds itself in, police-wise.

Yea, and if that would help then it should happen! tear it down, rebuild the department from the ground up, re-interview everyone to make sure no more bad apples fall through the cracks. I mean, is should be done slowly and when it is done in a few select places, the crime stats and complaints in that area should be monitored. If we see a general downtrend and it's mostly consistent then hopefully that would help.

I didn't do any actual research into what Camden did, so I probably shouldn't have used the term "tear it down." That's not practical, nor a good idea in terms of keeping criminals from running wild, Purge-style. You clearly picked up on that by mentioning that it should be done slowly.

Absolutely, one critical element of a process like that would be re-evaluating the cops that wanted to be re-hired, to make sure they're not racist sociopaths. Another key element, at least based on what little I heard about this, is that cops would be freed from what are truly not cop duties.

The money saved in this process could be used for getting people involved, like social workers, psychologists, etc., who specialize in problems we currently expect cops to deal with, but imo they shouldn't have to, such as the homeless, and other issues that could more accurately be described as social problems, as opposed to law enforcement issues.

What I find the most interesting about this (more accurately, most ironic?) is that when I think about it, doing something like this would actually be supported by both those on the left and the right, although for different reasons. The trick would be to come up with methods and goals that both sides could agree on. But I think conceptually, it's already a pretty good match.

as soon as a drug addicted mentally ill person stabs the social worker the community will scream why didn't you send the police

I mean, they could show up as backup, but not end up doing the main job at hand.