There were cities that literally defunded the police. More accurately, they deliberately engineered a crime crisis to discredit police reform activism under the

There were cities that literally defunded the police. More accurately, they deliberately engineered a crime crisis to discredit police reform activism under the common misunderstanding that "defund the police" means "I want the Purge" and not "stop sending cops out to shoot at homeless people in a Wendy's drive-thru". The thing about cops getting taken off the force is that it actually happens fairly commonly. The term of art in law enforcement for them is "gypsy[0] cops", because they jump from force to force whenever they do something that attracts media attention. Ironically, they are enabled by literally defunded police departments who are looking for someone they can pay peanuts to go issue traffic tickets all day. The really abusive bullies are their perfect employee, at least until they cause a media stir and have to be fired to save face. In all these cases, there actually is active pressure from people to reform and it does go to the people that matter. The problem is that those people have a vested interest in keeping policing brutal, and they are also rhetorically slippery. They will actively misinterpret your sloganeering, they will ignore your political writings and pamphlets, and generally seek to embarrass you until you go away. Less depressingly, I do recall a few cities[1] run by people with their heads on straight that did what the "defund the police" people meant, not what they literally said. And it turns out that, given not-crooked people in power implementing these things faithfully, it does work. The problem is entirely the people at the top making the decisions. What we need is not merely bottom-up pressure, but an explicit democratic mandate - i.e. infiltrating local government with competent politicians favorable to the cause. Also, maybe we should change the slogan. I vote for "Refund the Police", because it has a double-meaning: send back the violent interventions and fund non-violent programs instead. [0] Their words, not mine. For those unaware, in Europe this word is basically the N-word. [1] Whose names I frustratingly DO NOT REMEMBER