Taking lead out of gasoline may have done more to reduce urban crime than any police measure, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis for lots more on this.
If anything, I would blame the common sighting of said officers sitting in their cars playing Pokemon
[1] https://www.austinmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/FIX...
Austin DID defund the police, but was forced to refund the police.
Policies like stop and frisk really do work at reducing crime. But they also increase the abuse of civil liberties. Especially in those who don't have the resources to fight back in court.
And who pays when people do fight back and get huge settlements for trampling on their rights? No, it's not the cops that perpetrated the abuse. It's the tax payers.
Countries like China and Singapore have very low crime rates. But I don't think we should emulate all their practices. In Singapore, you can get lashed with a cane for grafitti. So, they don't have much graffiti.
We need smarter policing, not necessarily more police. Even in my area, I keep hearing about a shortage of police, and yet, I keep seeing police here just sitting in their same little speed trap hiding places waiting to catch someone and write a ticket.
We can pass laws against giving huge settlements to those that choose to illegally fight against law enforcement.
That's not what it means at all. In policing, as in most organizations, the overwhelming majority of expense comes from paying salaries and benefits. Equipment makes up a relatively small portion of the pie. The only way to defund the police, or anything else for that matter, is to cut the headcount.
Why I don't agree with AOC on much, she was considerably more honest than other politicians when she said, "Defund the police means defund the police".
As others have already pointed out, meaningful improvements to policing in the U.S. would require spending more money, not less.
A lot of rabidly anti-police people are actually against body cams.
I think most of the anti-police complaints are due to selective releasing of body-cam footage. We are approaching the point where the court of public opinion swings against officers when potentially exculpatory body-cam footage is conspicuously missing; perhaps that will help assuage those concerns.
It's literally not. Every major city in the country increased total funding for policing. Minneapolis was the only city that voted to defund the police, but ultimately even that was reversed before it ever went into effect.
What funding loss? Total spending on police increased in 2021 and 2022 in every major city across the country.