Policing is a pretty new institution - really only goes back a few hundred years. Before that? If someone was robbed, the community would figure out who they thought did it and go have a chat with that person - or a “chat” with them. This wasn’t a perfect system for obvious reasons. Often times everyone was pretty sure the guy who did the robbing was the one who coincidentally had the wrong skin color, had weird opinions, or was generally just disliked. Want a good example of how that goes wrong? See the Salem Witch Trials. But that relied on people living, working, and experiencing life in a pretty small geographic region.
So we had to come up with a new method. For a while, the solution was to have one guy who was in charge of things - one example was a Shire Reeve, who would be in charge of a whole bunch of crap - but keeping the peace of one of them. And he’d have a few guys he could pay to go fix problems. Usually violently. So neighborhoods would police themselves for the most part - most people lived around the same general districts after all - and if anyone got too out of line, the Shire Reeve (or whoever, I’m using Shire Reeve as an example since it was the one that literally evolved into the word Sheriff) would send his guys and hit people until the problem went away.
That eventually evolved into our current system. Now, people are calling for a new step forward. The truth is, as with any path forward, we don’t really know what is going to work and what isn’t. Right now, the simple truth is that we don’t have any way to stop a violent bad actor without violence. It’s unlikely we’ll ever live in a world where everyone agrees on the rules and agrees to follow them. Some people will break the rules. They’ll steal a pack of gum on a dare, drink and drive when they shouldn’t, murder 26 people with a machete while reciting the lyrics to Postal Service songs.
You probably saw that list of rules broken and said “those aren’t all the same thing!” and you’re right. Most solutions to policing sort of rely on exactly that instinct. Petty theft as a youthful lark isn’t the same as homicide. It’s not the same as property destruction. It’s not the same as civil dispute gotten out of hand.
The most popular “alternative” to policing isn’t really an alternative to use of violence. Just like how history always had someone with a stick there to make sure people followed the rules, we’re going to need someone with a stick. The trick is to make sure the stick isn’t used in the wrong situation. The best solution I’ve seen, is simply to make sure that the people taking care of the different rule breakers aren’t the same person, with the same hat, and with the same set of training. Instead of having “THE POLICE”, we have different groups trained to deal with different crimes. The guy dealing with petty youth crime probably doesn’t need firearms training - but he does need a lot of understanding of youth psychology and to be able to navigate unhealthy family dynamics. The gal dealing with murderers probably does need firearms training - in addition to forensic knowledge, some criminal psych, and crime scene protocols. The guy stopping people for speeding probably doesn’t need a gun either. But he should have a very good understanding of his community. But when you have the guy who has to be prepared to deal with murderers writing traffic tickets, you end up with a cop thinking that anybody could be a murderer, and walking up to your car with his hand on his pistol, ready to put 7 bullets into the back of your head if you spook him.
While we’re at it, we can also start putting more money into methods of nonlethally taking down the people who do need to be taken down. And we can put more money and resources into finding out what causes people to break societies rules - and how to get them better able to function within society. Rehabilitation.
In addition, we probably need to rebuild it from the ground up - or as close as we can. Being a police has a lot of baggage. From the way we enforce laws and investigate crimes, to the way we see police and the institution as a whole, to the relationship we have with them and the relationship between the police and the court system. It’s not enough to simply put a nicer face on police if they are still over-policing inner cities which are coincidentally predominantly minority through entirely coincidence and nothing else. Hopefully, if we start from the ground up, we can leave behind a majority of that baggage and the forces, culture and systems that lead to our current issues.
The result, hopefully, is that we reduce the fatalities and injuries. We ensure that people get the right kind of help they need, not just a guy with a blue suit and a gun every time. Send the right people with the right tools to the correct problems. After all, you know the saying - If the only tool you have is a standard police issue glock 22, then every problem looks like a black man reaching for a concealed firearm.