⬤ "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."
⬤ "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."
That's the problem with "defund the police". "We'd all love to see the plan", as John Lennon once put it.
Camden NJ did do this. They fired their entire police department and started over. Sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes you just need to fire the bottom 1-10%. Maybe give randomly-chosen civil grand juries the power to fire cops. Not just for criminal offenses, just for being subpar at being a cop.
Except that's not really what happened. They fired the existing police force at the time but most were hired back (155 of the 220 that reapplied), and then they expanded to a complement of 401 officers (it was 370 before). Then they built a gigantic surveillance apparatus that tracks pretty much everything. So, more police, more surveillance.
Homicides have apparently declined 63% since they did this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camden_County_Police_Departmen...
Camden made all members apply for jobs as if coming from another police department, but they had the files of the old department and could look directly at an applicant's job history and see how many complaints of excessive force were present, etc. They purged the worst 25% in starting over and that seemed to make a very large difference.
'hiring more police' well that can be argued as exactly what the activists want. if you define police as individuals who help the community with their issues without violence. making sure homeless people get food/shelter, mental health issues are resolved non violently etc.
I'd be all for hiring more of those 'police'.
As for surveillance, depends on the kind. I'd be all for surveillance used for detecting gunshots throughout a region. less okay for audio/video surveillance on every street corner.
Have you actually gone out and talked to these people?