You know the protests are in all 50 states. Some of the flare-ups are due to responses to pent-up frustration from covid, but a lot are due to police riots/escalation. The rest of the protests are peaceful.
> But what are the second and third order effects of underfunded police departments?
Police departments, for many reasons, are the most over-funded [1]. NYPD went on strike and crime actually went down [2] for the month they didn't police.
The goal is not to "disband" but essentially rewrite the entire purpose of the department. Essentially put the policing function in receivership to be revived with new leadership.
[1] https://theappeal.org/spending-billions-on-policing-then-mil...
[2] https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proacti...