What would "defunding the police" look like, in America? The Marshall Project gives a look at a program in Olympia, Washington, that gives one plausible example: Rather than sending police officers out on calls that do not involve crimes, "crisis response" teams are sent out instead to solve the actual problems that need solving. For complaints about the homeless, a response might be to find room at a nearby shelter. Those with medical or mental illnesses or suicidal thoughts could be provided a ride to the hospital.
It's cheaper. It's less likely to escalate into violence, both because experts trained to handle those noncriminal problems are more likely to respond appropriately and because many people immediately respond with wariness or aggression when suddenly confronted by armed and uniformed officers. And it frees law enforcement officers to do what they are trained to do, rather than spend the majority of each day responding to petty complaints, family squabbles, and mediations.
Redeveloping alternatives to often hyper-militarized police departments seems so obvious a decision that, when confronted with an example of such a program, it's difficult to think of any downsides. Why wouldn't we be doing this? What is wrong with us, that this is even controversial? Using experts trained specifically to solve nonviolent social issues without escalating them seems as natural as using doctors to diagnose medical problems. Or should we be tasking police departments with doing that, too?
None of this involves truly "defunding" departments, of course. At best it might slow the rate of growth of departments, but shrinking them will remain a pipe dream in most places. Giving impoverished Americans food and shelter remains, however, a more cost-effective means of policing than using armed force to drive them from one community to the next, and back again. Providing access to drug rehabilitation programs or counseling programs continues to be vastly cheaper than imprisoning Americans with addiction or other problems. We've known this forever, but have suffered as a nation from a sort of nationalized form of the "toxic masculinity." To conservatives, law-and-order policing is thought of as Manly, and Tough, and No-Nonsense; unarmed solutions are actively decried as not those things.
We're killing people—including police officers—because politicians like looking "tough" far more than they like looking "smart." And heaven knows it's only been getting worse.