American police has never been de-funded, and if you really think "good old fashioned" police work ever actually worked for most people, you are misinformed.
Without even discussing policing across racial and poverty lines, one only needs to look at police failing to catch serial killers, rapists, and even just house burglars.
The situation was much worst 10, 20, 30+ years ago. Nowadays police have some of their work done for them by technology and they are at least able to catch a few more criminals. Technology has also helped prevent false arrests in some cases. Apple's content scanning is problematic, for sure, but technology in general has been great for community safety.
I don't know why this is downvoted, you are absolutely right.
Prosecutions based, essentially, on community suspicion are what lead to countless black men being wrongfully convicted of the rape of white women.
Police embracing cutting edge science like DNA sequencing is what allows unreliable antiquated evidence like (gasp) eyewitness testimony to be given it's proper weight.
Perhaps people consider DNA evidence to be "good old-fashioned policing" nowadays but it was within people's lifetimes that it was as new was quantum computing is today.
The sooner the "good old fashioned policing" meme dies the better.
I don't think us have thought criminal scanning on our devices is going to fix any of that. Cops don't need to be in my phone unless they have reason to suspect me and have a warrant to search it. Otherwise this is just a corporate proxy for the cops in warrant-less searches of what we're doing day to day on our own devices.
Without even discussing policing across racial and poverty lines, one only needs to look at police failing to catch serial killers, rapists, and even just house burglars.
The situation was much worst 10, 20, 30+ years ago. Nowadays police have some of their work done for them by technology and they are at least able to catch a few more criminals. Technology has also helped prevent false arrests in some cases. Apple's content scanning is problematic, for sure, but technology in general has been great for community safety.