I think over time many police and fire departments will be merged into public safety agencies, streamlined and many aspects of their work will be outsourced to civilians for some of the reasons listed above by several of you. The remaining will be better trained and more para-military. There is a lot of waste in public safety and most of it is the pay of the many levels of administration similar to school districts and their multi-level bureaucracy. Most of us want boots on the ground and ultimately that is what the tax dollars should be paid for.