It's unfortunate society has used examples of policing requiring actual police as their reason to defund police, lately.

Until someone can show me an example of an unarmed social worker showing up and convincing someone with mental illness or under the influence it's not right to stab someone within the one second it took for that individual to lunge forward out of nowhere, after being pleasant for one minute upon arrival, I don't think I can support that.

People have the power to call the police. So they do. The police are powerless and can't control how humans will react. A different uniform won't change much.