To attract majority support, critics of police funding can do a couple of things. First, they can specify that money subtracted from police budgets would be moved not to unrelated needs, but to other kinds of policing or emergency response. A solid majority of Americans, around 60 percent, favors shifting some police money to “community policing” or “non-police first responder programs.” In May, an Axios-Ipsos poll showed that this message could dramatically change the political equation. Only 27 percent of the poll’s respondents supported defunding police, but 57 percent endorsed moving money to community policing and social services.

Another way to get majority support is to make it clear that any transfer of money away from police budgets would be accompanied by a transfer of responsibilities so that cops are relieved of certain burdens. In April, Data For Progress, a progressive strategy group, asked likely voters about the idea of reallocating portions of police budgets to create a new class of first responders who would deal with issues related to mental illness. Sixty-three percent of respondents favored that idea. The message behind such proposals is that advocates of reallocation aren’t trying to punish cops. They’re trying to liberate cops from duties to which they’re ill-suited, and pay somebody else to handle those duties instead.

But there’s a simpler way to get around the unpopularity of defunding police: Don’t mention police budgets at all. Don’t say reallocate, divert, or any of those words. Just talk about funding mental health services, social workers, and non-police first responders.