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Imagine a place where you fear walking down the street in the middle of the day. Imagine a place where you are scared of sleeping in your own bed because of the possibility of a home invasion. Well, this what life would be like if we chose to defund the police. Demands and debate to “defund the police” rose amid the protest in America regarding the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. Defunding is defined as reducing funding to a particular organisation. In this case, we are specifically looking at the possible diversion of funds from the police departments and redistributing the money into other public programs such as underfunded social services. This debate is widespread and has instigated conversation in Australia regarding Indigenous deaths in custody. In Australia, the protest drew issues to oppression, racism and police brutality against Indigenous people. However, withdrawing funding from the police force will have devastating consequences on the local community, giving alternative debates little weight. In this speech, I will be discussing how a reduction in funding for the police will reduce the development of police tactics, and with cutbacks, violence will increase in the local community. Finally, I will be discussing how the limitation of funding restricts the department’s ability to outreach to the local community. Do you really want to see police officer who cannot perform basic duties on our streets keeping us safe? Victoria Police received 3.5 billion dollars from 2019 to 2020, a massive 72.7 per cent of which went to salaries. The remaining percentage of the money went to training which is a little over 2 years, half of which is ethical and personal development training for instance ethics, leadership and yearly training regarding homelessness and other relevant topics. Jason Russell a homeless Aboriginal man was one of the many people the police spoke to while they were on their new walks to what he revealed: “put[s] a face to homelessness”. This tactic enabled the police to have a better understand of those affected by homelessness and therefore change their own beliefs about homelessness. Similarly to this initiative, police are trained based on what is happening in society. For example, in 2014 there was heavy preventative training regarding terrorism as a result of the sorrowful and sombre Sydney- Lindt Cafe siege. Societal training enables police to respond to task efficiently and ensures they are capable of handling any threat public safety faces and that they keep us safe. It also ensures that the police will behave responsibly, rightly and righteously. It is common sense to see that by defunding the police, violence will skyrocket. In the American city of Minneapolis, they removed $1 million from police and redirected it to the hiring “violence interrupters” who are supposed to intervene in violent situations and somehow calm the offenders down. The results were unsurprising, the data relayed back saw a rise in assaults, robberies, homicides and property crimes. They also saw more people murders in the first nine months of 2020 than in all of 2019. Do you really think that the removal of fund for the police here will be any different here? No matter where violence will climb and we’ll see a criminal spike similar to that found in Minneapolis this means more home invasions, more murders, more robberies, and widespread fear. Finally, by limiting funding to Police, outreach programs initiated by police may see a demise. The Police have many programs and initiatives which connect the police to the community. In 2018, the Aboriginal police service Maranguka Justice Reinvestment Project, located in Bourke, NSW saw a twenty-three per cent reduction in domestic violence and a forty-two per cent reduction in days spent in custody. It is evident that this police service vastly reduced crime in the Aboriginal community, although one may argue that the money spent by the police could be going to more social services that lack funding, like mental health or homelessness foundations. While this money could go to supporting social service and replacing some police officers with social workers, it just isn’t as simple as it sounds. The problem is that these interventions take time and money, we may see improvements to problems like domestic violence but it will take years to see the benefits, it also offers little consolation to the women who need help urgently that evening. With the reduction in funding, we will see a cutback to police services like that in Bourke who see immediate results and police offer who are able to swiftly and sufficiently be at the scene of the crime. It is clear that by defunding the police, we, the local community will acquire inadequate officers who cannot serve and protect the community, a drastic increase in crime and a reduction in effective police services. All these negative impacts will see disastrous consequences on the local community, so to ensure we live a life of security then we MUST ensure we retain funding to the police.