Let’s assume a city (or two?) decide to abolish their police force (which is what defunding would achieve).
What then?
What then?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2193971/Camden-poli...
The county police became the de facto police department for Camden, which is a model for what would likely happen in any city: the police or sheriff’s department for the next largest jurisdiction encompassing the city would start policing the city.
Policy-wise the motivations for retaining a city police department can be differences in crime between urban and suburban/rural areas, and population density & subsequent patrol officer density - and as a subset of that, response times. I would imagine that cities, and specifically the elected leaders, are also under significant pressure from police unions to retain their departments. Furthermore, disbanding a police department for any major city means that the county or state police department suddenly has to take on the workload of what was previously being done by hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of city police, and no department is prepared for that.
> And presumably if there's no county police the state police have jurisdiction.
There are many cities in the US that are outside of any county, and are their own incorporated entity on par in the hierarchy with the surrounding counties. As such the state police would be the most likely department to take over policing. Again though, that's a major resource burden and logistics problem; any feelings about the pros and cons of reduced police presence aside no policy maker is likely going to be comfortable with that kind of impact.
That won’t be better, it will be far worse, but it’s a thing people can do, so in the absence of other things to do, it may end up as the thing that is done. Desperate people do foolish things if they see no alternative.
It had sent a signal that police is to serve civil society and not be part of oppresion apparatus.
https://www.dcaf.ch/transforming-police-central-and-eastern-...
If the results are anywhere near as good as the groups pushing for police abolishment are projecting, then other cities toying with the idea decide to follow suit.
Eventually you even get to a place where even the rightwingers are proposing this in the slower-moving places, if marijuana legalization is any kind of model - I'm in a state with a very loose medical marijuana bill sitting on the Governor's desk that will be de facto recreational legalization, which was proposed and pushed through by Repubs, and that really kinda blows my mind.
But it also applies to the non-police. They aren't angels, either. And in the absence of police, they aren't going to become angels. They're going to still beat their wives, they're going to still mug random strangers, they're going to still do protection rackets. And they may do even more of those things when they don't have to worry about being stopped.
And then, the victims aren't angels, either. If they use a Second Amendment defense to those problems, they're not going to do it perfectly. They're going to do it in anger. They're going to do it with vigilante justice, hitting more people than they should, and hitting some of the wrong people.
> If the results are anywhere near as good as the groups pushing for police abolishment are projecting...
In light of human nature, I'm not banking on the results being wonderful.