system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Defunding the police is a flawed idea and would make the current problems even worse

For the past few months I have heard many people calling for the significant reduction in budget for police departments, and I struggle to understand the reason why people think that this would help reduce police brutality and police shootings, for a couple of reasons.

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1. It would mean lower quality training. If these multiple controversial shootings have taught us anything, it's that a lot of police officers are poorly trained; many people have been calling for officers to use more de-escalation techniques. If you take away the money, the quality of the training would go down, and how do you expect more competent officers when they receive less training than they do now? It currently takes around 12 weeks to become a police officer, and I agree that it should probably be longer, but how do you expect better training when they have less money?
2. Less money would lead to less officers. People are already complaining about how officers use tear gas etc. to disperse protests. If there were less officers to deal with riot control/crowd dispersal, it is only natural to assume that they would rely even more on the use of tools such as tear gas/rubber bullets.
3. With less officers, less training, officers are more likely to resort to lethal gadgets. Defunding the police isn't going to change the fact that one in every three Americans have firearms. Therefore, if a department was given less money, they would prioritise lethal weapons over non-lethal ones such as tasers or bean bag shotguns. With this combined with the fact that the officers are now less trained, the number of police shootings (justified o unjustified) will likely increase.

These three reasons makes me think that defunding the police is a bad idea. Instead, departments should look into the distribution of the money they have (less military grade vehicles, more training). Change My View.
gpt
"defund the police" isn't the clearest set of words. It's more like "reallocate existing police funding". Part of that is diverting money the police currently spend on military equipment, because holy shit, the police do not need tanks. Part of it is just generally reducing the amount of money police departments get (although not without some strings) and putting that money elsewhere. 

To give an example, police used to take people to the hospital before there were ambulances. Because police were not trained as healthcare professionals, they didn't do a good job here, and patients frequently died en route or shortly after. Then some black people got together, formed an ambulance company, and got medical training from a doctor. And just like that, survival rates skyrocketed. 

So when people say "defund the police" they're asking for that money to go to similar programs. We've seen significant successes in having mental health first responders deal with those having mental health crises (and the mentally ill are frequently shot by the police). Police are also not social workers, and similarly aren't well equipped to deal with children acting out in school, victims of sexual assault, or domestic violence. These can all be handled better by other, better trained people, and in many places, already are. 

And to touch on some of your points, defunding wouldn't just be cutting the budget and letting the department figure out what to do. It would involve other measures like restricting what can and can't be spent on (and what must be, like essential trainings). The big thing would be fewer police, since it would involve shrinking the scope of what police are asked to handle. There's also measures to reign in the massive overtime abuse police often engage in (Boston has over 500 officers who made more than 200k last year).