While social workers might be useful in Detroit, we are unlike Chicago in that we don't have a very heavy handed PD, but also one with significantly less funding and man power - we could use more funding to improve our abysmal response times in many neighborhoods.
However Detroit's PD still has bad cops even if they are miles ahead of other police departments, even though we could use more police in general - I don't think more "heavy handedness" or "aggressiveness" is useful or desired.
But that's not what you're going to get, folks. Now you're going to get half as many officers, and "social workers" trying to talk sense into armed meth heads. Good luck. All because upper middle class white youth has never interacted with a police officer and thinks you don't need them. Note also that I didn't say "heavy handed". I said "heavy", meaning visible presence, patrols, monitoring.
Yes, one of them happened very close to my childhood from home, but I don't understand where there's a disagreement.
It should be noted that aggressive policing - distinct from increased police presence - has been shown to contribute to violent/major crimes rather than decrease it: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5
Significant community trust has been built by police in Detroit by keeping their limited resources focused on what helps prevent violence rather than broken windows policing - I believe the community would agree and the police leadership here have voiced support for this as well.
When you define the police you get less police presence or police with less training budget.
There just isn't any good news to either the a abolitionists or the motte and Bailey argument of "we don't mean completely" argument to the future of policing or society. Violent rioters are demanding we defund our defenses against violent rioters.
However Detroit's PD still has bad cops even if they are miles ahead of other police departments, even though we could use more police in general - I don't think more "heavy handedness" or "aggressiveness" is useful or desired.