The police must be defunded. We need a mix of citizens’ councils, Crown councils, courts and diminished roles for police and prisons as remedies for the problem of social inequality. Those citizens’ councils must not be co-opted and turned into an iron curtain of mass surveillance.
A new basis for social order is also required, such as a guaranteed basic income and democratic socialism.
This is all uncharted territory and there will be many unintended consequences.
Defunding, which means demobilizaion, could be a problem. As is the case in contemporary Mexico, Russia and elsewhere, former police and soldiers easily turn to armed brigandage, join paramilitaries or narcos. That might not happen here.
But given the last 40 years is increasingly dystopian and corruption already a serious problem in policing, nothing is to be ruled out.
Committing sociology is not about being right. It is about a frame of mind, of being open to critical interpretations and a way of asking questions about the dense fog of ideology that besets us.