Without trying to pick sides, the argument would be that these redistributive programs will not enhance public safety but instead will make things worse. For those who can afford it, the safety "gap" will be addressed by private security forces, gated communities, or simply re-locating (and taking their tax dollars with them).
And there's an opposite argument to that, that the police would be able to properly allocate the appropriate officers to where they're needed.
Right now, officers are trained and conditioned in a way that keeps their gun at the forefront of responses. Especially in Minneapolis, where--as of six years ago--96% of the MPD were not from Minneapolis, but commuted from surrounding suburbs, there's an "us vs them" occupier mentality that results from not being a public servant in your own neighborhood. Many MPD cops openly talk about Minneapolis being akin to entering a warzone.
If we had people properly trained in deescalating non-violent or domestic situations, who people would feel confident in calling because they wouldn't be worried about somehow getting shot, the armed officers would be able to focus their efforts on the situations requiring their presence.
It's a complicated situation. But it's been shown time and again that our system isn't necessarily working, and it would be beneficial to look at other approaches and countries for guidance.
It's crazy to me that there's no actual police education in the US, but on the other hand, the police where I'm from, where a 3 year degree from a police school is required, the police are constantly understaffed, and especially the districts suffer. Especially in the US where education isn't free, I can't see that approach be anything other than a disaster.
"Defund the police" doesn't mean "tax break for citizens". It means reallocating those funds, which emphasizes training.
There's very little oversight of how the police spend their money, which leads to instances like Snoqualmie purchasing a mine-resistant armored vehicle instead of investing in training.
As a way of communicating "spend more money training police", "defund the police" utterly fails. And the really extreme advocates really do mean "defund the police" as in no policing or police force at all.
Stop playing word games. I'll continue to advocate for specific police reforms that are plainly described and that I have some hope of understanding what is being proposed.
I won't advocate via the mantra of "defund the police" because, as I pointed out, no one agrees on what that means. This distortion of language makes it very difficult to have rational discussion. Witness all the problems caused by not understanding that "protesting" and "rioting" are actually different activities and that "mostly peaceful" is not a valid synonym for "frequently violent".
The vocabulary of critical social justice theory is another minefield of words used in novel ways. Lots of people don't understand this (including myself until I started researching this recently) so you get very divisive interactions going on because people are talking past each other.
> Without trying to pick sides, the argument would be that these redistributive programs will not enhance public safety but instead will make things worse.
I see no reason that redistributing their duties related to things like traffic infractions, non-criminal calls, property crime, medical emergencies, etc. would do anything but help public safety, as cops are not particularly good at most of those things. They lack the training and professional culture to handle them appropriately. Rather than give them yet more money to train in such a wide variety of situations, we should have actual professionals that know how to handle, say, mental health crises respond to them, and only involve police as a backup to them at most.
Also, the vast majority of crime is related to poverty. Even gang violence is a product of poverty and the drug war, both of which can be addressed through policy and reallocation of funds.
> For those who can afford it, the safety "gap" will be addressed by private security forces, gated communities, or simply re-locating (and taking their tax dollars with them).
I wouldn't mind this much, as anyone interested in using their capital to do such things are also meddling unhelpfully in local politics.
