Instead of giving the police this crazy gear, we should redirect that money into training for the police. Or maybe some of it should go to schools.
The idea being that for the roles you'd traditionally want police to cover (response to violent crime), they've successfully received case law that doesn't require that to be one of their duties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia And nearly everything else is better handled by social worker like positions addressing the root issues. Police shouldn't be mental health professionals. It's just cheaper to give homeless housing than constantly fine and jail them. The war on drugs has been a policing failure, just like alcohol prohibition was. Low level traffic infractions tend to just be an extra revenue generation scheme aimed at the poor. etc.
We've also got data on the idea that the policing causes crime, from when the NYPD went on strike 2014-2015, and the crime rate plummeted. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5
And we've spent decades trying to reform in place, without much progress, because structurally they don't want reform and kneecap the reforms at every opportunity. Better to dump the whole system and it's nomenclature, and rebuild what pieces we want with new roles.