By now, you've heard numerous calls to 'defund the police'. In the wake of the George Floyd protests, activists fighting against police brutality have repeatedly called for 'defunding the police'. A lot of politicians and pundits took this as a step too far, saying that defunding the police would mean getting rid of the system of law and order, and thus abolish the entire point of a police. Nevertheless, cries continue to this day, even after attempts to divert funding from police organizations faltered. It is still one of the central goals of the Black Lives Matter movement in their push against systemic racism. Defunding the police is not a matter of weakening the criminal justice system so that they no longer can protect us from criminals. The argument against defunding the police stems from the argument that the ethos of government is to maintain control of society, so that we are not running rampantly around wrecking mayhem. This has been especially the case with pundits who point to rioting as what society would like if police is defunded. But the point of defunding the police is not meant to be an extreme response to holding police accountable. The point of defunding the police is that the system has obtained too many resources that other resources are sorely lagging. For instance, New York City allocated $5.9 billion to its police. In comparison, they allocated $5.3 billion for its homeless services, health and housing costs. Is there any reason the police gets that much money? The notion of giving the police enough money to practically become a miniaturized version of the military stems from US President Ronald Reagan. Reagan decided to take the War on Drugs in high gear, and felt the only way they could do that would be to overfund the police criminal justice system. More resources for the police meant endless methods to take on drug cartels, and making drug cartels feel scared about getting caught. Essentially, the police obtained more power to execute its objectives. And as we all know, power corrupts. With police officers now obtaining assault rifles, tear-gas shooters, and even grenade launchers. After all, why leave all those expensive weapons just sitting around in the closet? With all these tools to take on criminals, it's no wonder police would use them as a means of maintaining law and order in a threatening manner. This excessive use of force is part of what inadvertently inspired the movement to defund the police. Do the police really need all that firepower to take on criminals? Isn't a simple handgun just enough? Isn't it a bit much to take on drug operators with a grenade launcher? According to a video by Vox, a retired police chief told a New York Times reporter that he turned opportunities to obtain high-caliber weapons because it would have fed a mind-set that he would be a soldier constantly at war than police officer protecting a community. Aside from moments where criminals may have stronger weapons against police officers, there is little reason for police officers to obtain this much weaponry, especially when the amount of resources allocated to them could easily benefit other resource that could actually deter crime, such as a universal basic income. The amount of weaponry police officers have will obviously make protestors feel more threatened, and they will push even harder if the police seem more like a force for maintaining control of the status quo. The extra push from protesters will incentivize the police to use the very weapons that inspires anger amongst the protesters, and a riot will inevitably spark. If members of a member of a community want to feel protected by its local police force, then it should not look as a military that wants to control every aspect of its citizens' lives. Police should be protective, not antagonistic, of its citizens. CITATIONS Baranauckas, Carla, and Carl Sullivan. “Here’s How Much Money Goes to Police Departments in Largest Cities across the U.S.” WLST, 26 June 2020, eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/06/26/how-much-money-goes-to-police-departments-in-americas-largest-cities/112004904. Vox. “What ‘Defund the Police’ Really Means.” YouTube, uploaded by Vox, 26 June 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9w841nrIBg. ----"Why America’s Police Look like Soldiers.” YouTube, uploaded by Vox, 25 June 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOAOVbyfjA0.

**TL;DR: The police are currently responsible for too much, defunding them would (or should) just mean allocating those resources to other programs.** The police are called for pretty much everything - mental health crises, noise complaints, parking violations, even to help deliver [babies on freeways](https://fox17.com/news/local/middle-tennessee-mom-gives-birth-on-side-of-road-thanks-to-angel-police-officer). In fact, only [4.4%](https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/police_dispatch_stats/) of police calls from 2018-2020 were for violent crimes. It's also worth noting that even some of the less serious things that we assume must be handled by the police, like parking tickets or filing runaway reports, can also be split up, so as to decentralize the power and possibly prevent some of the speeding ticket-turned-murder incidents that we see now. Part of the problem is that they simply aren't trained enough for some of these situations. This can sometimes turn ugly, as it did with Arnaldo Rios Soto, an autistic man who had run away from his group home when someone saw him in the middle of the road and called the police. Arnaldo's caretaker, Charles Kinsey, found him and was explaining to the police officer that Arnaldo was not a threat (from the ground, I should add), when the officer shot Kinsey while attempting to shoot Arnaldo. Even more often, the encounters are just useless, as the police are often not trained in de-escalating someone from suicide, for example. So, the idea of defunding the police is not to create a society where you have no-one to call when someone is breaking into your home. Obviously this would be a horrible idea. It's mostly just to de-concentrate these services from a singular force, and reallocate funding to other services that already exist, and potentially create new, more specialized entities. These services would also emphasize crime *prevention* rather than punishment.

TL;DR: Budgets need to shift drastically. But defunding is not the way to do it. Improper funding is why we expect ill-trained officers to have a whole cluster of skills that are best left to professionals. What we need to defund is police militarization. We drastically need to INCREASE funding towards specialization. A bodyguard with a gun doesn't make a good social worker. A social psychologist doesn't make a good riot guard. Having specialists be both well-trained and available is paramount for having an effective justice system that doesn't do more harm than good. One issue is that nearly all politicians are lawyers. We have no specialization in politics. So you have lawyers voting on social issues and scientific issues. We need social workers voting on social issues, and scientists voting on science issues. All the lawyers in congress just try to throw money at some "one size fits all" solution. This is dangerous to the public. But also, it is unfair to expect one type of officer to have every skillset imaginable. It cripples officers' mental health, and the public pays the price just as much.

Whether you think police funding should be reallocated towards social welfare programmes (which I do), or not, the slogan itself is terrible politics. Here is Tony Blair in the [New Statesman](https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/05/tony-blair-without-total-change-labour-will-die): "“Defund the police” may be the left’s most damaging political slogan since “the dictatorship of the proletariat”... It leaves the Right with a powerful cultural message around defending flag, family and fireside traditional values."