You've made a few cogent points here and I appreciate that:
1) As you've noted, even when you send the right personel to deal with the issue (i.e a mental health episode) you still have to accompany them with the police. Most don't appreciate this point.
But relatedly, often these issues are not separate and distinct. A person suffering from a mental health episode often also is the one wielding a knife or a weapon. That's often how the police got involved in the first place.
For the record, a lot of talk about diverting Police fund is misguided. Like I've noted and cited previously, the national average for police funding is about 4% of yearly expenditure. And in the major Cities it could be as high as 10%. In New York City for example it's a bit below 7%.
Generally speaking, it's a fallacy that the police are over-funded. The claims of militarization is also overblown. By and large, most military grade equipment the police forces acquires are often leftovers or excesses from a bloated national military budget and these excesses as given to police forces as gifts or sold to polices forces at nominal fees.
Not to mention that gear seldom comes out expect during riots and hostile situations such as kidnappings or hostage situations. To focus on them as reasons to defund the police' is often misguided.
Here are some facts about the issue, police use of force is extremely rare... Lethal force is used in about 0.003% of all arrest cases. In 2018 police made and estimated 10.3 million arrests and discharged their weapons a total of around 3044 times.
So it helps to have a clear understanding of what the problem we are attempting to solve is. We are trying to reduce on a .003% problem.
Btw, the level of police violence has dropped over 90% in the last 30 years. Yet the rally cries to defund has continued to get louder in the face of those facts
California ( one if the strongholds of the defund ) had its 19 year low of police violence in 2019... You wouldn't know this if all you listen to are the defunders.
Again, like most people I am pro reform:
Universal database that tracks police weapon discharge events.
National database on officer reprimands and decommissions
Universal Bodycam turned at every incident of contact with the public
Rethinking Qualified Immunity. Albeit this is a tougher one
I'd even support de- Militarizing (just to change the narrative). It's not like they use these tanks and weapons really
But no matter what changes are made one has to be conversant that it's likely that the improvements will NOT stop those who have a political motive, and they'd simply find the outlier, and use it as the basis of their next uproar.
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