This is so terrible. It makes me think about comments I heard from John Gretton "Jocko" Willink, an ex-Navy Seal podcaster on YouTube. During the height of the defund the police movement he suggested that doing so would make things worse. As I recall, he said it would be better to increase the funding for police departments so that there could be more police. Increasing the police force by one third would allow patrol officers to be off the streets for one week out of every month. During that week they could decompress from the stress of being on patrol and could spend the time in training classes that could alternate through various subject including de-escalation, Spanish lessons, stress training, etc. (These are my recollections of what he said, take them with a grain of salt.)

I'm sure that a Navy Seal has very different training requirements than a police officer, so Mr. Willink's thoughts may not be relevant, but at least to me they make sense. I would be willing to pay more for police if it meant that they would be better trained, that the job paid well enough that marginal officers wouldn't be hired, and that there was enough time off from stressful work to keep the police officers lives more balanced. I don't know if this would have saved Raj Moonesinghe's life, but what we are doing now is not working.