As a law enforcement veteran of over 20 years my short answer is - yes. Here is my long answer -
Any given day in the U.S. hundreds of 911 calls come into communications centers like this:
"911. State the nature of your emergency."
"My adult son hasn't taken his psyche meds in 3 days. He's locked himself in his bedroom and is punching holes into the walls. Please send help."
"Stay on the phone with me, ma'am. Police are on the way."
Dispatchers in the U.S. can respond to most 911 calls only 3 ways - 1) send the police, 2) send fire/ems, or 3) send both. Fire always stages from a distance until "the scene is safe" (i.e. zero chance of violence). So, 1 or 2 officers go into this lady's house, try to use their 8 hours of training (videos and death by powerpoint) to talk the 26 year old mentally ill man who is off his meds out of his room so they can hand him over to EMS for transport to a mental hospital. Only the mentally ill man comes out and tries to fight the police, tries to stab one of the officers with a 12 inch long screwdriver, and ends up getting shot. So this poor woman calls for help and instead she gets to witness her son killed in a hail of bullets in her own house. If she and her son are a minority ethnic group and the police are not, queue the protests and prep for riots.
Another common call:
"911. State the nature of your emergency."
"My 13 year old son is refusing to go to school. Please send the police."
Sounds ridiculous. Literally happens every day in my city. Just like any call, once you call the police the police are coming.
That is one of the prevailing issues. The police are law enforcement. Our job is to detect or investigate crimes and, if there is probable cause, make an arrest to start the due process of our criminal justice process.
The police are not mental health workers. The police are not social workers. The police are not civil litigation mediators. If you pay a guy to build you a new privacy fence and he only builds half of it and leaves it is not a crime. He failed to fulfill a contract. Hire an attorney and file a lawsuit.
So, by all means, cut police department budgets, but do so to fund other services. It has been stated that the 85/15 principle applies to the modern policing problem. 85 percent of that problem lies at the feet of the 15 percent - management. We don't need police reform. We need policing reform. Police Officers are rarely the problem. Policing policies made by police chiefs and elected officials are.
I long for the day when that poor lady calls 911 and the dispatcher says, "Emergency Mental Health Services are en route to help ma'am," and the police are the ones who stage at a distance just in case. I pray for the day when police chiefs adopt a policy that says, "If there is no chance of a crime involved we are not responding."