You've made really good points. It still revolves around your major question: how do you know who to send? The dispatcher could be wrong, the caller could be wrong, and situations adjudged innocent might be very dangerous. At the end of the day the fact remains that some cases the police are called for do not warrant armed policing and defunding the police is about sending someone else. Deciding when to send someone else might be tricky but defunding the police is about solving this trick. Maybe a couple of armed policemen can accompany the social workers or something. That CAHOOTS I talked about have been doing this alternative policing for over 30 years and it has been working so there's a lot of merit somewhere there.
Also your talk about this defunding thing just being about labelling some forms of policing something else is correct. Defunding the police is actually about just trying some other forms of policing. Man, the word "defund" used in this whole thing is clearly a bad choice, it should have just been called 'reforming the police' or 'sending some of the police money somewhere else' or something 😂😂 And you're right, it might end up costing as much money or probably more.
RE: How Power Determines Real Life Villains