Cops don’t solve the problems or meet the needs you THINK they do. The sooner we see police for exactly what they are — a domestic military unit meant and created to create harm, not solve problems— the sooner we can say “ok what should we create to fix the lingering problems?” https://twitter.com/fodderyfodder/status/1334294164763267073

Abolish the police isn’t a call to not replace the police with anything— here are a few ideas:

- particularized traffic patrol

Think about it, the same officers who write accident reports and respond to noise complaints also have the capacity to shoot and kill. That means a single police officer has a monopoly over the entire force continuum, from casually talking to aggressively handcuffing to shooting.

To killing. A situation can escalate from calm conversation to the use of deadly force in a matter of seconds, entirely at their discretion.

Why were weapons-carrying agents of the state the chosen response to men sleeping in their cars?

The same can be asked about a dispute over a (possibly) counterfeit $20 bill. A mistaken drug bust. A traffic citation. A man selling untaxed cigarettes. None of these infractions began with violence; yet, each of them ended in a Black man or woman killed by armed police.

There is no justifiable reason why armed police officers should be in charge of road safety. Police officers are not hired for a particular talent in highway navigation, accident report taking, or citation writing.

And deploying armed officers to perform such routine tasks introduces the risk of unnecessary lethal force into many millions of encounters every year. So many examples of traffic stops ending in death— and it simply wouldn’t have happened if the officer hadn’t been armed.

Example of this in practice: Highways England in the UK employs unarmed traffic officers, and many other of the country’s traffic duties are left up to “community support officers” who can give out citations but are both unarmed and lack arrest power.

And even if that interaction went poorly, the officer’s backup would have been an officer armed with only a baton and handcuffs, not a gun.

In 2015, British police killed fewer people (55) in 24 years than American police killed in the first 24 days of 2015 in the US.

Only about 10 percent of British police carry guns, and they mostly operate on teams of highly trained specialists whose full-time responsibility is to answer calls of the highest possible threat level, like an active shooter or terrorist attack.

-mobile crisis response unit

Calls involving the homeless, addicted, intoxicated, or mentally ill — are routed to a separate unarmed team of specialists extensively trained in mental health counseling, social work, and crisis deescalation.

Role is closer to that of an EMT for social issues than a traditional police officer: They assess the situation, assist the individual as best they can, and then direct that individual to a higher level of care or service if needed.

We need to imagine an entirely different model of first responders to issues that aren’t violent (though criminalized) like homelessness, addiction, and mental illness.

These are just a few ideas from experts and abolitionists on how to solve our actual problems