system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Defunding the police may boost other aspects of life, but it doesn't solve the police issue. It makes it worse.

I see many people saying that police need to be better trained, better recruitment standard and better equipment (non lethal options and nonstop bodcams). I see the same people saying to defund police. 

Better training costs money. For example, the police academy for ATL PD is 35 weeks I've learned. That's eight months. How do you suggest we offer better training with less resources?

Better recruitment requires better incentives for more highly qualified candidates to apply. I dont understand how we can attract better candidates with less resources to incentivize them with.

As far as equipment goes.. same kind of question. How do we make these options plausible with less resources?

I am a big advocate of reallocating funds to a lot of the important areas that people say defunding police will impact. I do not think that defunding the police, however, is an acceptable place to take those funds from. 

Asking in good faith. This is not a gotcha post.


Edit: super interested in this post, will be back in a couple hours to answer all responses! Thanks for all the feedback so far!


Edit: got through another round a responses, more to come in a bit! Thanks again!
gpt
Even if we doubled the amount of training police receive, they would never catch up to the amount of training that social workers have, which is one of the reasons it doesn't make sense to make police the first responders with people who are having mental health crises, homeless, or suffering from addiction. Social workers are the ones who have expertise in understanding those issues and communicating with desperate, vulnerable people.

Sometimes we *will* need someone armed, but that's not actually the majority of these calls. Let's say a department's current practice is to send 2 officers whenever they get a call about a person having a mental health crisis. One possible defunding option would be to send 1 cop and 1 social worker instead of 2 cops.