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.