"Police" (Edit:"modern police") is a 19th century invention, well after cities were a thing. If we get past semantics, a service that provides order and security to a community is needed. I imagine it more like social workers that also do criminal investigations for prosecutors instead of a military force for a city. Perhaps an unrelated armed "police" can help when deadly force is needed (gangs, armed criminals,etc...).
Disarm and civilize the police but keep their SWAT units as a separate department that only backs up police when requested.
This would throwing a lot less people in jail and having police that live in the community. But hey, this is just wishful imagination, politicians and police union would commit sedition if anything like this happened.
What you are describing is the London Metropolitan Police which are regarded as one of the worlds best managed police forces, where the average bobby are unarmed and where the code of conduct focus on public service.
It;s also worth noting that when the UK faced a similar problem with an undiverse militarized police force in northern Ireland they did this https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/police/patten/recommend.htm and launched a bunch of investigation(the Stevens enquiries) into past crimes of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
The problem in America blocking any meaningful solutions to genuine problems is the collective denial the American middle class have towards past sins and current systematic problems with the American way not that it's a new problem that have never been solved before.
If anything, there should be more police imo but they should be disarmed with a gun being something you need to call for. There is so much petty crime, harassment, and assault that happens on a daily basis that just goes unreported or isn't followed up with since police are spread so thin, in LA at least. I want to see the return of the beat cop who walks the neighborhood regularly. I want to feel safe walking around my city and not have to watch my back for someone out of their mind on meth who might think my backpack is easy pickings.
At USC, they have these security people who just walk around the off campus area and report belligerent activity. Their uniforms are bright, so you can spot them at night and run over if needed. At the very least this sort of security needs to be in place in all parks and transit stops, there are just too many insane people left to fester on the street unfortunately. I'd love to have more shelters and mental health services built, and fully support all efforts at the ballot, but that's a 5-10 year timeline with land permitting and construction versus just handing out high vis vests and walkie talkies, and the situation certainly isn't improving in the mean time.
By civilizing the police we also mean affirmative action to bring the demographics of the officers in line with the people they serve. Removing guns wouldn’t have saved Eric Garner or George Floyd.
Other ways of turning policing away from "tacticool" policing and towards community policing: offering cops more $$$; requiring a degree or two; placing residency requirements (x cops in a precinct must live within y miles of the community they are to serve) to help weed out the bully types.
To do all that you need to start with offering cops more cash, as in LA at least there is a huge recruiting problem and a staffing shortage. No one wants to be a cop, its a notoriously shit job where they haze you worse than boot camp and that's why many cops come from cop families who don't know any better than to tow the family line.
Cops in LA are also very highly paid especially in benefits and overtime. Part of the reason why they are so short staffed is that it is cheaper to pay a cop well into the 6 figures in over time and pay for one retirement pension then it is to hire two regular time cops and pay two pensions. I don't know how you fix this issue beyond enforcing stricter criminal punishment against bad cops and start actually busting heads instead of slapping wrists.
a notoriously shit job where they haze you worse than boot camp
That would indicate a leadership problem. Regular people just won't stay around when everyone from the top down is bent, even if the salary is outrageous.
They make between $200k and $500k and still shoot rubber bullets at helpful protestors in San Jose so maybe throwing money into a hole isn't super useful as a strategy.
We did that in my country; it did not have the effect people hoped for, just made them another class of privileged employees milking the system. I have 2 former cops in my family, they retired young for nice pensions, money never made them any better cops. One was similar to a police captain with a masters degree, one was a seargent.
I'd hate to break it to you but if you look at the actual data collected on police shootings you will see that while black Americans are overrepresented (they are 13% of the population but represent 24% of people killed by police), there are many many cases where the person killed is the same race as the officer. The majority of people killed by police in the USA were white.
BLM doesn't form protests when black men are killed by black cops. They are politically savvy and understand that the optics of that aren't conducive to their message. In fact, they don't appear to care at all about non black people killed by police either. The 76 percent of people killed by police that aren't black don't interest them.
The real danger to black men in USA is being murdered by a non cop. Black men are insanely overrepresented in both homicide victimization and perpetration.
It should be noted that southern whites in the USA had massive rates of homicide until the early 20th century. They have significantly higher rates of violence compared to northern whites even today.
I don't know if this includes deaths by things like choking or beating.
If this is correct, death by cop is actually pretty rare. Not bitten by shark rare, but maybe in the magnitude of fatally falling off a ladder rare.
Which of course isn't to say harassment or abuse by cop is also rare. Nor to say there isn't racial disparity because the chart clearly shows there is.
I'm not familiar with the nature of crime in either Germany or Poland. Do either country have widespread gun ownership like the United States does?
In the United States when you look at the data that is posted in my previous comment you will see that the vast majority of police shootings involve an armed suspect.
However even if you only look at data on unarmed suspects I highly suspect that the US has a higher per capita rate than either Germany or Poland.
It's not nearly the only answer, but at least in the case of Eric Garner, his arresting officers were all white. There were no black men or women arresting George Floyd either. I was tacking onto the long list of reforms that we should consider.
The argument that the right race is better than competency is overused. People pointing at race are one of the reasons racism exists, asking for diversity is using divide et impera the races, not helping anyone.
Disarm and civilize the police but keep their SWAT units as a separate department that only backs up police when requested.
This would throwing a lot less people in jail and having police that live in the community. But hey, this is just wishful imagination, politicians and police union would commit sedition if anything like this happened.