To be fair, the cold reboot was their way of dealing with the traffic police specifically, not all police.
But still, the scale here is massive - they fired 30,000 people overall, and half of them on a single day. And, just as in US today, the opposition claimed that such a disruptive measure would unleash a wave of criminal or reckless behavior (on the roads), and a lot of people would die as a result. That didn't happen.
1. The NYPD isn't trying to replace their police workforce. They've simply stopped policing.
2. The current social ajd political environment would cause a hike in crime-rate regardless of police action, and it's not easy to disentangle the effects.
> Previous “slowdowns” by the NYPD have resulted in a drastic reduction in reported crime in NYC.
I couldn't find where that was mentioned in your linked article, but the Occam's razor takeaway is that the crime is still happening and not being reported because people know nothing will be done.
My bad, I just glanced and conflated two events. The one I had in mind was replacing the police force of Ukraine in 2015. A country of 44 million people fired all the 150 thousand policemen and hired 120 thousand new ones.
But still, the scale here is massive - they fired 30,000 people overall, and half of them on a single day. And, just as in US today, the opposition claimed that such a disruptive measure would unleash a wave of criminal or reckless behavior (on the roads), and a lot of people would die as a result. That didn't happen.