 The most common response or criticism, rather, that I've heard of the Defund the Police slogan is that it sounds like people who say they want to defund the police really just want to get rid of police. It sounds like they don't want anyone to show up to my house when I call 911. So, like, what do we do in that instance? Are you just hiding your abolitionist agenda behind a catchy slogan? And in actuality, that's not really the case. Defund the police really is more about reallocating resources into other areas in society because in cities across the country, police department budgets are much, much more bloated than anywhere else. So basically, what folks who advocate for defunding the police want is more money in healthcare, education, housing. That's really all that it's about. And it's important because, you know, up until this point, we've always just accepted that for every single public health issue in America, there's a one-size-fits-all solution. It's policing, right? So rather than trying to tackle this issue of homelessness with housing, we just criminalize homelessness. Rather than responding to drug abuse and addiction with treatment, we respond by criminalizing drugs. So people are calling for a new approach to drastically rethink policing in America. And some cities are starting to do that. Denver, for example, rolled out their program known as STAR, which stands for Support Team Assistance Response. And the preliminary results are very, very encouraging. So as Grace Hawk of USA Today reports, the U.S. city is reporting early success with the program that replaces traditional law enforcement responders with healthcare workers for some emergency calls. Previously, Denver 911 operators only directed calls to police or fire department first responders, but the Support Team Assistance Response, STAR pilot program, created a third track for directing emergency calls to a two-person team, a medic and a clinician, staffed in a van from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays. The STAR program, which launched in June, reported promising results in its six-month progress report. The program aims to provide a person-centric mobile crisis response to community members who are experiencing problems related to mental health, depression, poverty, homelessness, or substance abuse issues. Denver is among several U.S. cities working to develop an alternative emergency responder model for people who are experiencing mental health crises, as police officers fatally shoot hundreds of people experiencing mental health crises every year according to a Washington Post database of fatal shootings by on-duty police officers. Since 2015, police have fatally shot nearly 1,400 people with mental illnesses according to the database. Over the first six months of the pilot, Denver received more than 2,500 emergency calls that fell into the STAR program's purview, and the STAR team was able to respond to 748 calls. No calls required the assistance of police, and no one was arrested. Denver police responded to nearly 95,000 incidents over the same period, suggesting that an expanded STAR program could reduce police calls by nearly 3% according to the report. Data collected during the pilot program found that STAR calls were focused in certain areas of the city, and most were calls for trespassing and welfare checks. Approximately 68% of people contacted were experiencing homelessness, and there were mental health concerns in 61% of cases, largely schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder, with 33% of people having co-occurring conditions according to the report. So keep in mind that these are just preliminary results, but this is incredibly encouraging. Very, very, uh, encouraging. Look, folks who claim to support the police, I don't know why you'd be against this. Because don't you want police officers to have more time to deal with real issues? Like, if they're not responding to mental health issues, then this frees them up to deal with actual crime. But for the folks who don't think police are suited to respond to issues related to mental health or homelessness, this gives them what they want as well. Like, I feel like this is something that appeases both sides, not to both sides it, but this is what we all should want and strive for. Now perhaps it just needs to be done, because once people see an example of this working, then perhaps they'll get on board with it, and we might see a sort of domino effect. I mean, people are usually skeptical until they see something in action, until they have concrete evidence that suggests this is a good policy. I mean, look at cannabis legalization. All of a sudden, you see two states legalized in Colorado and Washington, and now we have almost 15 states with legal recreational cannabis. All it takes is one good example to get the ball rolling. And again, to go back to defund the police, I usually don't like to use memes to educate people or demonstrate my point, but this meme really just does such a great job at explaining what folks who want to defund the police want. Like if you reallocate the money being used to fund an already bloated police budgets to other areas of society, then imagine everything that we could accomplish. We could fund education, healthcare, youth services, housing, other community investments. And if you decrease the need for police, then overall the aggregate effect will be that there is less police brutality, because they're interacting with less people and individuals who are experts, who are social workers, who are trained to deal with people with specific needs, drug abuse, mental health issues. That's obviously going to improve the state's response to folks with these very special needs. So this is win-win-win, and really what we just need is for more cities to do this. And thankfully, since it's at the city level, this is something that folks can easily get involved with and make a huge difference. Like you don't have to wait until Congress is full of progressives to have this enacted. Like you can take action, you can organize with people in your area, and you can encourage your city council to adopt a program like this as well. So look, I just wanted to share this because this is really fantastic news. Again, this is early and we need more evidence that this works, but so far what we're seeing is very positive, to say the least.