Use this chance for real LAPD reform

The necessary work that needs to be done to reform policing in America has been temporarily derailed because of fraught rhetoric in the wake of the murder by officers in Minneapolis of George Floyd.

The choice of words in the call by some to “defund the police” resulted in a backlash against any and all efforts to deal systematically with police violence against the citizenry.

Certainly it was a dumb thing to say. No one in their right mind wants to eliminate all police departments. By and large, officers across our country and the world are dedicated public servants who serve to increase the safety of all in their communities.

But, in fact, what most of those activists who adopted the “defund” slogan really meant was to reallocate monies in the way we pay for policing.

No matter. It was such a tone-deaf phrase that it helped create the current awful stalemate in which different camps supposedly either “back the blue” at all costs or disdain all cops at all times. No real humans believe in such extremes. But perception rules here. It's hard to find commonsense middle ground.

One proposal now backed in theory, at least by a Los Angeles Police Department union, would “remove LAPD officers from a list of 28 types of public safety service calls that they normally would handle — and instead hand those duties over to unarmed responders from other agencies,” as our staff writer Emily Holshouser reports.

The union proposes removing officers from calls like fender-benders, noise complaints, nonviolent mental health incidents and homeless encampment cleanups.

Of course this makes sense. Of course this is precisely the kind of reform that could put sworn (and expensive) officers back to fighting crime. And of course, because there is so much suspicion about police union motives, some activists view it as “a ploy” rather than real reform.

Instead of rejecting it out of hand, let's use the language of the peace offer as a starting point for a real conversation through the city's new Office of Unarmed Response and Safety, created by the City Council last year. To “align the right calls with the right responders,” as the union says, is what we all want. So let's hammer out the details instead of returning to our corners.