Defund the Police Movement: Why not look at pension costs?

With the death of George Floyd, protesters have galvanized around the concept of Defund the Police. This movement ranges from opinions that go from reallocating budget resources to the idea that we should abolish the police department. I think getting rid of the police department is a rather dumb idea, but I do support the idea that budget resources need to be reallocated. What should be the first budget line item that needs discussion? Pensions, of course.

KCRW has an article up about police political power in California and has this brief quote about pensions:

Then, 20 years ago [Proposition 172 that dealt with public safety], the full-scale police looting of municipal budgets began, with retirement enhancements allowing officers to retire at age 50 and claim huge pensions. These pension boosts were both retroactive and permanent, and included easily-abused rules that allowed cops to spike their pensions astronomically. Current LAPD Chief Michel Moore briefly retired and exploited one pension provision to pocket $1.27 million.

The escalating police pensions, along with lucrative disability benefits and costly retiree health coverage, crushed city budgets.

. . . Another irony is that massive increases in police budgets haven’t produced more police. Most cities have fewer sworn officers than they did in 2008. That’s why police departments are now struggling to muster personnel to protect property from vandalism and looting.

So yes, a well known problem with the public pension crisis (or growing into a crisis) is that an increase amount of government budgets are having to get allocated to pension costs. An interesting situation could occur should pensions get addressed. You could in fact defund the police while at the same time hire more police or at least keep the police force at the same level while allocating more funds to other programs. In general, this is true if you look at pensions across all of government.

Another thing is why should police be able to retire at age 50? Don't the rest of us have to wait until a much later age? I agree that you might not want a 65 year old working as a police officer, but like many of people, as time goes by people sometimes have to switch careers. Now at a certain level of service, police should be able to collect a pension. But my question is should they be allowed "retirement enhancements" (the article doesn't go into great details about what that is) at such a young age? Shouldn't officers just be required to find other jobs if they can no longer do their current job?