zlacker

They "protect and serve" by attempting to intervene in crime in progress if possible but mostly trying to find the people who've committed crimes so they can be held accountable by the state and it's citizens (jury of your peers and all that).

At least ideally. It doesn't always work that way but it's a misnomer to blame the police for a neighborhood being unsafe and you're going to be disappointed if you expect them to.

>>parine+(OP)
They also get called to many non-crimes and to other situations that do not require armed, violent responses.

I think it would be great to set up competition to Police forces: Cities should create and staff an unarmed "Helper Force" who gets deployed to non-emergencies, to help people in distress, investigate "Karen's" complaints of this and that, to defuse mental health episodes (maybe bring a social worker), incidents involving children, rescuing cats out of trees, and so on. Carry on for a year, and then have both the Helper force and the Police force summarize in writing how they benefitted the community over then last 12 months, and have them fight for funding on the basis of that report.

I think taxpayers would decide that they'd rather have the helpers.

>>parine+(OP)
If the only thing police did was correctly and safely execute arrest warrants for specific people I think people would be far less critical of them.