That’s not the argument. If you want to argue with me, do that. As I said earlier, the Minneapolis police and their union are being absurdly resistant to change here, including attempting to fight to get the murderous officers that did this back on the force.I'm not sure what point you're making here.
Divisions being non-apparent to people doesn't change how those divisions exist.
Also, in a world where all those things were handled by separate departments (i.e. street patrol and riot police being two completely separate organizations), that would accomplish...what, in this context? If riot police are insufficient in number to deal with something, and they have to call in people from Street Patrol Inc., then SPI is still going to be undertrained for the task at hand, unless SPI already had riot patrol training as well, in which case I ask what the point was in breaking them up in the first place.
And "responsibilities to social workers." Well, which responsibilities are you talking about? If it's a round-about way of saying that more resources should go into social welfare, of helping people afflicted by poverty, then sure. I'm all for that. But that isn't the crux of the abolition argument, the abolition argument is that police should be disbanded entirely. And while social workers do a lot of good, I'm skeptical of their ability to deal with armed confrontation, highway patrol, terrorist actions, or whatnot.
Further, if they aren’t trained to handle riots, they shouldn’t handle them, because right now we have cops driving straight into crowds with murderous intent. That’s a fucking problem.