Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The real question is how can we attract and retain officers that want to do the job? Maybe the job just doesn't make sense in modern America? If police as a concept didn't exist already, no one would create it. If you broke it down into its parts, you find plenty of people who would sign up to handle mental health crisis and plenty of people to sign up to handle quality of life problems. You'd have a third group th…
"If police as a concept didn't exist already, no one would create it." Is there any evidence of that? Seems there are quite a few who support them as-is and many more who want to see minor reforms. What do you mean by quality of life problems? How do we plan to staff in that model given police response time already averages 5 minutes (would it then be 15, or would we have 3x the cost to fill 3x the positions)?
How could there be any evidence of that?
> Seems there are quite a few who support them as-is and many more who want to see minor reforms.
Sure, that's the not the same thing. Many people reflexively back the police because they perceive themselves as benefitting from the status quo or otherwise have it as part of their socio-political identity. Some people back the police because they think they are "good enough" and don't want to think about how to reshape the system. But that isn't what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about a hypothetical. We have a list of problems such as theft, drunk driving, speeding, people in mental health crisis, domestic violence, crowd control, etc. In the hypothetical situation where we have all of these problems, but we don't have the police and never had, do you honestly think we'd assign all of these duties to one position?
> What do you mean by quality of life problems?
Cat in a tree, unwanted person, taking a report about a stolen bicycle, responding to a traffic collision. Non-life threatening situations that have absolutely no need for someone with a gun to respond.
>How do we plan to staff in that model given police response time already averages 5 minutes (would it then be 15, or would we have 3x the cost to fill 3x the positions)?
The police are unqualified to handle most of the calls they are called out to. You'd have different teams that respond to different types of calls. Non-armed responders are a hell of a lot cheaper and are able to respond to the majority of calls. You'd have a small group of armed LEOs who would respond to violent crimes in progress, and then you'd have hybrid responses to stuff like domestic violence where you need a social worker as the primary response and an armed person as a secondary security.
You'd construct your force around those principles. Remember, most cops never fire their weapon.