The other thing to keep in mind about the "defund the police," slogan is that most other countries cops do their jobs with way less than half the funding that US cops get. They also don't have the largest and best equipped military in the world just handing them old equipment, from weapons, to body armor, to armored vehicles. US cops are a racket specifically designed to bleed the taxpayer dry, and waste as much money as possible.

Ok, well here, and I say this as someone who was victim to a pretty bad crime this summer, we’ve tried other things. Retrain the cops? They select training that teaches them to think of suspects as a constant threat to their life and listen to their gut or stuff like drug training that puts them in deadly fear of fentanyl and teaches them to mistreat marijuana users even where it’s legal. Fund them better? They buy military surplus equipment like MRAPs. Body cameras? They turn them off. Any accountability whatsoever? They stick together better than the mafia.

And all this with a purely puntitive justice system. It needs a complete overhaul and that begins by making sure the police can’t afford military vehicles.