Memes

Reality is and always should have been cops do cop things. Locally. Traffic shit should be department of transportation. etc. etc.

Make local cops walk local beats and only focus on the community safety and suddenly things get better. 'Us vs Them' is a pretty easy thing to spin when they only are a corrective force with a chip on their shoulder.

Proper training, education, and being held accountable for your actions will filter out the bad blood quickly enough.

Defund is frankly a word that was selected poorly. It implies punishment. It only amplifies the 'Us vs Them' narrative on both 'sides.'

ACAB? No. Problem with corruption and a system that spits out at best tight lipped accomplices and at worst zealots brandishing 'might makes right' ideals? Yep.

Fix the system and the problem fixes itself.

Isn't that basically how it is in the UK where most cops don't have guns?

We have this many places in Europe. The police are not even allowed to wear guns in Norway (and frankly do not need them) unless there is some special intelligence or something making a reason for it. That does not absolve the need for state controlled monopoly on violence. It only means that is should be limited and wielded with the utmost care.

There does need to be someone with a gun I can call if someone is literally breaking into my home intent on murdering my family

well-funded social workers and emergency first responders who are trained to resolve conflicts while actually helping those in need of it without threat of eminent deadly violence.

If we do things properly, then no one should have a need to break in to your house (because everyone's material needs would be met), and if you've given someone reason to kill you, calling someone with a gun to kill them isn't going to solve anything. If they're mentally unwell, calling a person with a gun is even worse.

The second option you gave is more than enough 99.99% of the time.

Some degree of community defence might be imperative, but it should never be one person with one gun who is in charge of "enforcement", but everyone would be trained and everyone would have access, and in a time of real need (like an external and violent threat to the community) those ready and available can do what is needed, but again - killing someone isn't it 99.99% of the time.

Much worse for who?

My point is: if police were completely abolished, conservatives and the far right would feel very unsafe and immediately form militias that enforce their values. That would be much worse for everyone who doesn't share their values, of course.

I get that in many countries, police is badly regulated and you might say that this wouldn't actually change much, but I'd rather seek more accountability for police, compared to a complete abolishion, leaving a power vaccum that'll be filled by right wing militias with zero accountability.

Divesting seems good to me though, much of the police is certainly overfunded (due to law and order populism) and does useless shit (like the war on drugs), while education, social workers and programs against poverty are severely underfunded. Changing this would surely help a lot with crime reduction and other issues.

Thanks for the links by the way, I will look more into them when I have more time to see if my concerns regarding abolishion are addressed.

Robert Peele's Nine Principles of Policing are a good start:

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.