what improvements made by defunding the police

But I think this goes back to the comment regarding guns in the public. I'll use domestic violence, but it's true of many on that list - but how can you possibly send someone to a domestic violence call unarmed? I mean those are horrific situations to deal with if the assailant DOESN'T have a gun - but considering the proliferation of guns in the US, sending an unarmed social worker to deal with domestic violence is just impossible. 

I also think that there is a point for well trained swat teams- I flash to Columbine and we felt needed the gear and the vehicles (turns out the shooters were dead, but we didn't know that).

There is a place for them, sure. But does this strike you as right? 

What? It is rare and yet many are caught? Via traffic stops? What is your source for this data?

Timothy McVeigh was caught because of a traffic stop
So was Ted Bundy, Randy Kraft, William Lester Suff, Joel Rifkin,James E. Swann Jr.,Larry Eyler,and Richard Ramirez could have been if the sketch had been accurate.

Those are just the ones I can think of, there may be others. Also murders that aren't serial killers are sometimes caught because of traffic stops.

I said rare because having a named serial killer isn't an everyday occurrence

Maybe demanding or insisting would be a better word, but besides a few people here, that is mostly referring to what I see in other forms of social media.  People saying that they will/will not do xyz until all of their demands (including defunding the police) are met, or similar statements.  

I do think there are some good ideas here, but I still disagree that defunding the police immediately is the answer.  

A petition to the City of Seattle called for 50% reduction in funding of the Seattle Police Department.  The mayor has rejected it.

mynorthwest.com/1916442/seattle-rally-city-defund-the-police-community-solutions/

*snort* at what point did I talk about skin color? If you looked at the list I gave you at all, you'd notice they almost all were white.

Yes. People are protesting outside of our governors residence today and that is one of their demands. If people aren’t really asking for that, then they shouldn’t be stating it so emphatically on social media.

Defund the police doesn’t necessarily mean that you would not have some form of community-based institution that would respond to some of the kinds of situations you folks are taking about. It means that the current institutions we have are failing communities and that another implicit bias training session isn’t going to fix those problems.

Look at the situation in Buffalo we’ve been discussing. If all of those people charge with serving the public—people who have guns and are permitted to use force under some circumstances—think it is ok to lie about what everyone can see on camera, and then, when confronted, decide that it’s fine to seriously injure an elderly man because of where he is standing, should those people be funded?

For many people, that is their ongoing experience with police. Definitely many of us would agree that fewer things need to be criminalized at all, and there are circumstances where police aren’t the appropriate responders. Not everyone would agree, but I think that position has gained mainstream traction. You could envision first responders who are not police who deal with mental health events, eg.

So the harder question is, what about the people who are doing the serious stuff, the stuff that we’d probably all agree is really harmful to other people? Well, unfortunately, you can talk to a lot of people who are sexual assault victims or domestic violence victims about their interactions with police, and they are not all going to paint you a picture of professionalism, competence, or care. A lot of domestic violence survivors *do not want the person arrested or in jail*; what that means is that many of them learn just not to call the police. Others do not call the police because when the police arrive, they take the victim into custody for fighting back; remove the children from the household; arrest the victim or others in the house because there are drugs (I literally defended a woman in that position, although she had what police said was a stolen item).

The clearance rate for serious offenses—murder, sexual assault—is very low in many of the jurisdictions where people are asking to defund police. Perhaps it’s because the police focus energy on offenses where they can raise money through asset forfeiture. Perhaps
It’s because it’s easier to clear low-level drug offenses. Perhaps
In some communities they have lost the trust of the people in those communities and people will not cooperate with investigations.

Anyhow, this is not me taking any position other than, I think it is worth doing some serious reflecting on the question of, if we were going to design community institutions to respond to these problems, what would they look like? Who would staff them? What would they be permitted to do? What accountability measures would we put in place? We didn’t start out in this country with a professional police force at all—we also didn’t have prisons. Those institutions developed over time, and often developed or expanded to serve the cause of oppressing black people (patrols to recapture people who escaped slavery, prisoner leasing post-civil-war, etc). It is definitely worth having a conversation about what we want going forward.