Defund the Fuzz?

A councilman in Atlanta who supports defunding the police had his car stolen by a bunch of kids.

If you don't know about the "defund the police" movement, you can learn about it by some savvy searching, but try to avoid the fascist Right's blatherings on it.

There is an argument to be made that we expect too much of the police. I suspect that the percentge of police recruits who joined the force out of an aspiration to deal with homeless people and people having mental health breakdowns is probably in the lowsingle-digits of a percentile. There has to be a better way to do it.

But the way to address those needs is to figure out what should be done and put those services and programs in place before taking mental health crisis response and homeless outreach away from the police. Get those programs running, make sure they work and then, if it cam be shown that there has been a significan load reduction on police services, reduce funding for the police. But this will cost real money.

Otherwise, we'd repeat the same mistakes that were made, decades ago, when the lunatic asylums were closed down without providing for any alternatives for those who needed those services.

In summation, if you really think that defunding the police will translate into reduced costs for local government, I respectfully suggest that you grab ahold of your ears and pull your head out of your ass.