Very true. We have to protect ourselves but without the Police there would be total chaos, riots, looting and destruction such as we have seen during protests in many of our cities.
You seem to be implying that those cities didn't HAVE police.
If they DID, and they STILL had "total chaos, riots, looting and destruction", that tends to contradict your argument.
I view the police as a SOMETIMES necessary EVIL.
I have no illusions about their motivations or in some cases competence.
I've lived in Chicago where the Chicago PD is simply just another species of criminal, living on the public dole.
I've lived in NE Ohio and seen the Cleveland PD in action. Unlike the Chicago PD, they're unlikely to beat you outside of a law enforcement context, or to rob you outright. On the other hand, they quite clearly don't give a damn, as evidenced by 2/3 of my interactions with them, and their record of ignoring race riots, a dead woman by the side of the Interstate (whom they identified as a "deer"), and multiple kidnapping victims in one location for TEN years.
I AVOID the police whenever humanly possible. The odds of them doing anything of BENEFIT to me are slim to none. Depending upon where I am, the odds of them HARMING me, short of actually shooting me, can be quite high. Unlike the grifters of "Black [Felon] Lives Matter", I don't believe that a [Black] felon getting shot to death in the act of a violent assault is a cause for outrage, nor do I believe that the only "misdeeds" by police which matter are the shootings of violent [Black] felons in the act. Akai Gurley wasn't committing ANY crime, and NEITHER the police unions NOR Black Lives Matter give a damn about him OR people like Kathryn Johnston, Emma Hernandez, Margie Carranza or David Perdue.