[mjevans]

'Defund' is far more inflammatory than alternative phrasing.

RE-form the Police -- this is a movement I can more readily support and I hope is self descriptive and accurate. Police departments have become alienated from communities because they are no longer about the mission to protect and serve the common people and the commons; they have instead become yet another type of organization using violence for control. The videogame Crackdown got that right many years ago.

As horrid as the Japanese justice system is about the presumption of guilt; their practice of neighborhood officers and community involvement seem like positive traits that should be copied in the USA and elsewhere as one facet of improving the positive interaction of peace officers and the community.

[crooked-v]

> RE-form the Police -- this is a movement I can more readily support and I hope is self descriptive and accurate.

What this is missing here from "defund the police" is that part of the point of that slogan is to take responsibility (and, yes, funding) for some duties away from police entirely and give them to new organizations that have more limited scope and much more limited use of force.

A prime example here is parking enforcement, which is often performed by the police despite having no particular need for the legal monopoly on violence that comes with police officers.