Yes.
Okay, I read it. It rests heavily on the claim that "police don't prevent crime" and some study showing that relative levels of police presence didn't have a dramatic effect on crime rates. But here's what no study can examine empirically:
(As the police scholar David Bayley put it in his 1994 book Police for the Future, “The police do not prevent crime. This is one of the best kept secrets of modern life. Experts know it, the police know it, but the public does not know it.”)
You can study what effect you see from increasing or decreasing police presence have on crime rates, but you can't account for what effect it would have on people's behavior if they knew the police were no longer there.
Aside from that, the bulk of the interview is just talking about social good that could be done if more money were devoted to social programs and mental health services. And I agree with those things. But I think that the premise that since changes to the relative amount of policing hasn't resulted in dramatic changes to the crime rate we could do away with police altogether without any consequences is unfounded.
-k
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