A good precedent to study: Georgia's Ex-President Explains How He Abolished Police and Brought Down Crime > I Abolished and Rebuilt the Police. The United Sta

A good precedent to study: Georgia's Ex-President Explains How He Abolished Police and Brought Down Crime > I Abolished and Rebuilt the Police. The United States Can Do the Same. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/11/abolish-police-georgia-brutality-crime/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/11/abolish-police-georgia-... > After Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2004, I became president of a failed state. Law enforcement agencies functioned like criminal gangs. Officers demanded bribes, trafficked narcotics and weapons, and worked for political and business elites as a mercenary security force. Georgia was a textbook example of “predatory policing”: Police did not perform the basic responsibilities of ensuring public safety, instead enriching themselves and their patrons by extorting citizens. A 2003 survey found that just 2.3 percent of Georgians held a positive view of police. > Given that reality, police reform was not only a matter of restructuring institutions or implementing better policies. We had to change the mentality of a broken, cynical, and fearful society. > Before people could begin to trust the police, we—the new political elites—had to earn their trust. Challenging the status quo was not enough. We had to destroy it and build something better. > We replaced them with an entirely new force of Patrol Police, who had no background in law enforcement and thus no ties to old, corrupted elites. Recruits had to pass a competitive examination and complete a course in criminal procedure code. They were trained in persuasion, negotiation, and mediation skills to minimize the use of force. > In 2005 Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili fired "the entire traffic police force" of the Georgian National Police due to corruption, numbering around 30,000 police officers. ... Throughout the reformation, policemen were presented with new Volkswagen cars and navy blue uniforms, with "Police" written on the back. Law enforcement in Georgia (country) - Wikipedia