I agree that addressing underlying causes would reduce those problems but it would take decades even if we went all in on fixing those things. What exactly do we do about them in the mean time?
Many people seem to take it to mean that. It even seems like some are trying to implement it that way. Catchy slogans tend to result in shitty implementations.
Sure, just like no one actually knows what "critical race theory" actually means. A concerted effort to encourage these misunderstandings hardly helps.
“Defund the police” is a horrible slogan, no matter how accurately or inaccurately someone describes it. If you need to write a paragraph or two explaining what your slogan actually means, then you need to abandon it.
That it'd take a while to make significant progress isn't a reason not to start.