In fact I mention redirecting funding from the police force towards rebuilding the communities infrastructure and creating more jobs, social services, housing, education, redirecting 911 emergency calls to appropriately dispatch the proper services, etc. With all that, you still have to get from present day to future somehow. Abolition will not happen in one fell swoop, even MPD150 states that quite clearly. It is why I was trying to reframe the message of simply defunding or abolishing the police. It has to happen overtime.
For a great part of my career I dealt with change management and you can't just force dramatic change on people overnight without a great deal of push back and anxiety. The easiest way to get buy in is to handle change incrementally and get buy in from the change owners, in this case the community at large. Small changes over time with the end goal always in mind.
I think the only reason that there is a hard push back for abolishing the police is the framing of the message. It is too harsh and anxiety inducing for the average person to comprehend. Their brain goes into tilt mode and focuses only on the word and not the overall objective and results.
I've seen it time and time again in manufacturing system when change was forced on workers who had systems in place for decades and replacement was not something that could be forced on them. When you tried to force change to quickly, you got death threats, accidents and equipment destruction. However, if you put change in slowly with lots of customer feedback and buy in, the change was so incremental that it was accepted and nurtured rather than shamed and destroyed.
I am all for removing the oppressive power structure of the current police forces. I agree with MPD150 that it will take time and redistribution of current police budgets to social services, community programs, education, housing -- while rebuilding the current policing system from the ground up to handle lower officer counts, reduced budgets, demilitarized units, psychological evaluations, yearly restructuring mandates based on yearly budget cuts, etc. All I am proposing is that during the transitional period, retraining, and rethinking go hand in hand during the process of systemic rebuilding. Yearly evaluations controlled by outside oversight and re-certification in community guidelines is all a part of the process to at least make the transition as humane as possible.
Thank you for the chance at discussion.
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