i think it's worth pointing out giving the still semi-inflammatory nature of the headline, no serious advocate of defunding the police has ever suggested that simply doing that is the goal. the idea is to shift funding from cops walking around with guns killing people to things that actually prevent crime from happening, and as the piece points out, even in the few places that have actually reduced funding to police,…
'Defund' is far more inflammatory than alternative phrasing. RE-form the Police -- this is a movement I can more readily support and I hope is self descriptive and accurate. Police departments have become alienated from communities because they are no longer about the mission to protect and serve the common people and the commons; they have instead become yet another type of organization using violence for control. T…
What this is missing here from "defund the police" is that part of the point of that slogan is to take responsibility (and, yes, funding) for some duties away from police entirely and give them to new organizations that have more limited scope and much more limited use of force.
A prime example here is parking enforcement, which is often performed by the police despite having no particular need for the legal monopoly on violence that comes with police officers.