Why not just have social workers? Do they need to be cops at all? Why not take money from police departments who are poorly doing too many things and spend that on infrastructure and social programs that actually do a good job of taking care of people?
There are a lot of things hat can be done through policy changes that have nothing to do with the police per se (at least in terms of regulating their person-to-person interactions), but that would affect greatly how the police behave. For example, let's make it illegal to do asset forfeiture and to impose onerous court fees on civil infractions, as well as to bar any money generated by court fees and asset forfeiture to be used as operating revenue (it is the disgusting truth that some courts have to "self-fund"; the legal system is ostensibly for public protection, so it needs to be funded by the public at large, full stop). And let's make it illegal for employers to be able to see civil infractions and misdemeanors on a background check, and do something about aggressive credit monitoring by employers as well. All these things can be abused by the legal system and they lead to keeping poor people (black and otherwise) poor. I guess some of my frustration has been that so many of the root causes about why the police can act with impunity come down to money, plain and simple. We need to solve those money problems in parallel with police reform or it will amount to lip service and nothing more. That's my worry when we just say, "fuck the police" and we're done.
I certainly agree that these are all problems that need to get addressed regardless of what we do with the cops! This is begging for a socialist analysis of policing, but I'm not sure Hubski is ready for that and either way I'm certainly not the girl to do it. :) Any police abolitionist who has put thought into it knows it's more complicated than just closing police departments. Abolition only works if you do it in tandem with building social services and abolishing mass incarceration, reforming laws that unjustly punish folks, developing non-punitive forms of justice, and so on. But that's a bit less catchy than "fuck the police", so it's not what you see on signs or Twitter :) If you are interested in reading more, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? and The End of Policing are both available as free e-books right now!so many of the root causes about why the police can act with impunity come down to money, plain and simple.
These are all questions worth asking. I have yet to hear tangible arguments against them. The high suicide rate among police also tells us that the profession needs redefining.