Market-focused rhetoric over the past decades has made it tempting to think we can just allocate payments the right way to accomplish what we want. This is one case where that fails. Instead, we need leadership.

Police budgets are taxpayer money. Even if cutting a budget meant laying off officers, there's reason to think that would create problems - the needs of the community wouldn't be reduced, so you'd be having fewer officers doing more, which is both costly (in overtime) and increases fatigue and the likelihood of problematic behavior. And taking it out of the pension fund or otherwise spreading the harm to other officers is both easily gamed and incentivizes cover-ups.

It matters who we elect. A significant faction of the U.S. has been convinced that government is simply bad or ineffective, and they vote for people who deliberately prove that. But if we want to see change we need to elect people who are willing to go to the mat for the things we support.