The police aren’t always qualified to deal with the situations they may come across – As mentioned in previous articles, the police have ended up having to perform roles they aren’t necessarily trained properly to do. This may include, for instance, responding to people in a mental health emergency, attempting to de-escalate violence (rather than simply responding with force-in-kind) or checking up on people who would otherwise be referred to social services.

Police involvement in these kinds of things should be a last resort than a first resort and would be better dealt with by specifically-trained professionals and experts. When the police misstep or fall short when performing these not-strictly-policing roles, then naturally it could lead to increased community tensions or increased mistrust (i.e. the death of someone with mental health problems in police custody). Seeing a police car on blue lights turn up may make matters worse rather than better.

The police have largely become a reactive force and there isn’t enough focus on addressing the root causes of crime – The police’s primary role is to keep the peace and that means they’re often used in reaction to crime, potential crimes or someone being put in immediate danger. This could be interpreted as meaning – and perhaps is by many on the left – that the police are a means for the wealthy to protect their property and societal interests or almost act like hired security for the government.

There is undoubtedly some good community policing on the ground in some areas. Unfortunately, it’s far cheaper and easier for governments to fund a police force to hold back and contain social problems instead of making the necessary investments to reduce inequality and the kind of social conditions that breed crime.

Reforms haven’t worked; “the police look after their own” – The last few years have seen a steady trickle of stories about individual police officers or groups of officers abusing their positions or even committing crimes themselves.

While scepticism or outright hostility towards the police isn’t as widespread as defunding or abolition campaigners might think it is, it all erodes trust bit by bit. Protesters are increasingly seen as a nuisance or something the UK Government would like to clamp down on instead of being properly engaged with and there’s the chilling effect of things like facial recognition vans and holding disciplinary hearings behind closed doors.

There hasn’t been any meaningful reform to the police in the UK for several decades – particularly in terms of accountability; most of the changes have been window dressing. While the “Blue Code of Silence” – where police officers don’t inform on each other – perhaps isn’t as strong in the UK as it is in the US, recent stories do beg the question as to whether attitudes amongst the police that we thought died out in the 1970s were just quietly compartmentalised and still exist?

It sounds unrealistic even if there’s support for some of the goals behind it – No mainstream political party in the UK supports “defunding” or “abolishing” the police and even in places where it has happened to an extent, such as the US case studies mentioned earlier, the cuts were usually reversed or were never quite what they seemed. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, just that it’s facing challenges from the start.

A “tough on crime” attitude still prevails in UK politics, particularly amongst middle England, and any suggestion that police numbers should be cut, or money redirected to “those undeserving poor”, would be fiercely resisted by the Conservatives and probably Labour too. There’s a risk that “defund the police” comes across as fantasy politics which has ended up muddying more nuanced calls – which probably has political support – for greater investment in social support services.

If anything, we’re probably going to see increased spending on the police (if not necessarily in real terms) and that has to happen if the Conservatives are going to see through their manifesto commitments on crime or enforce their various clampdowns.

It would probably lead to private policing – If the public sector vacated policing, then what do those defunding and abolition campaigners think the wealthy and suburbanites will do to protect themselves from the hoi polloi?

There would likely be a large pool of ex-police officers eager to provide private security and investigatory services to those willing to pay for it…and probably lightly regulated too. For the rest of us, if the police don’t have the resources to respond to crimes there would be vigilantes at best. More on this later in the week.

Would it lead to a spike in crime? – The obvious argument against, but there’s no obvious answer. What’s more likely under a defunding scenario is that crimes would take longer to respond to and cases would take longer to clear. A shrunken police force would probably concentrate on the worst of the worst while, as mentioned, private security contractors step in to deal with the rest.

The idea of not having an organised state-backed force to maintain the peace probably is attractive to some people too. Crime would not necessarily increase if money was properly invested in the kind of public services that deter and prevent crime. If that social investment doesn’t materialise, then the likely victims would be those living in deprived areas.

Any spike in crime, short-term or not, would immediately be blamed on cuts to policing and put pressure on politicians to reverse it.