I didn't say they should be social workers, I suggested they have a degree in social work. Police encounters with those in mental distress (either temporary due to a crisis or a deeper mental illness such as schizophrenia) frequently end in tragedy. I want to believe that a police officer trained as a social worker would have a much better chance of de-escalation a personal than current police do.
The alternative is to have unarmed social workers, untrained in police work, accompany police officers to mental distress calls. This brings with it a host of other problems including, but not limited to, the possibility of the social worker being injured or killed in an altercation with an armed person in distress.
@malnourish has a good point, though. Quite often police respond to calls that require a social worker or mental health professional. And in some of those cases, the police decides that a bullet is the best solution to the problem that they are equipped to provide. Many problems require very different solutions, and many police officers are not equipped to provide those solutions. That is a major problem.
Either police officers need to be trained as social workers and mental health professionals, or part of their work needs to be taken over by those that have that training.
I sure hope the mechanism for last resort cases isn't men and women in uniform with guns, because then social workers will be very unwilling to approach any potentially violent situation without the not-police-uniform-gun-men there.
Sorry to be cynical, just the experience of a police officer in a place where social services are funded far, far better than the US - police don't want to deal with mental health all the time, but being the agency of last resort makes it very easy to abdicate responsibility to.
The police are there for when limited violence needs to be meted out to prevent greater harm. They are not counsellors, social workers, or doctors. More funding needs to go to those professionals instead of giving the police military-grade weapons.
About half the people killed by US police have a mental illness. Police do need to be careful but shooting people is probably not the right thing to do in most of those cases.
Better training in de-escalation and rapid tranquilisation and psychiatric nurse accompaniment would be better.
Sorry, I should do a better job at explaining why I said what I said. I'll try to do better at that next time. What I meant to imply is that non-violent forces like the social worker or the man defending his business (using pleading and non-violent force) can very easily be met with violent force. Whereas sometimes even the fear of violence is enough to stop the escalation of force. I honestly don't even know if that black man that defended his business lived. I can agree with you police need to be better at de-escalating they and their departments should be striving for that. Maybe training could help? Also at the same time I feel, and I'm not saying this is something that always happens but it's a thing that always happens under the given circumstances, when something isn't de-escalated without force (such as a failed de-escalation by a social worker or non-violent de-escalation by police) it by nature will escalate, so to prevent loss of life sometimes force can be necessary (such as what the police can do). So, leaving the police completely out of it in the first place could be dangerous to the social worker and other parties involved.
Haven’t read full article because of paywall, but I get a gist.
A mate in a city I used to live, a mental health expert himself, mentioned that when mental health experts are first responders they have a tendency to shoot fewer people, and get shot at less often.
Recently I’ve been advocating that police attendances should also require at least one public legal expert / mental health expert to attend.
Police are trained to respond with escalating force. Fair enough, someone in society has to be delegated that responsibly. But it should be tempered by the attendance of those who are trained in public health, safety, and legal advocacy.
While I do agree, I’m curious how you think that might alleviate some of these issues (specifically)? Wouldn’t a mentally unstable person with a weapon still be considered a high risk threat? Potentially even more so than a combatant, as police aren’t necessarily equipped to understand mental conditions.
If the problem isn't that someone is employing existential violence, the response shouldn't be to send a bunch of people with guns. Often the police are called on to harass people who are on the fringes of society, such as the mentally ill or the homeless, and the best case scenario is these people are arbitrarily harassed, but they often end up imprisoned or dead. If someone is having a crisis, there should be a resource society provides you to help protect yourself and them; the police are not that resource.
If we're going to have a bunch of people with guns, we can't tell them that they're warriors, the last line of defense, the thin blue line, et cetera. It greenlights abuse by creating a culture where the rules are viewed as impediments which can be discarded as long as you get away with it, justified as "doing what is necessary," a sort of Dirty Harry or Jack Bauer theory of policing. This creates a culture that imposes it's desires on society rather than one that protects, serves, and defends society.
If an old lady falls down then you call 911 and get an ambulance to come. There's no risk of violence.
But with mental illness there is the risk of violence and that is the police's role.
I can't see this working out and it's not fair to send in people not able to deal with a situation if it turns violent. You are sending in unarmed people to ENGAGE with someone potentially violent. If something goes wrong, sure they can call the police, but if you have people already engaging with the person it increases the risk for them.
should the state implement mental health screening for police officers? if a cop has this much fear and anxiety dealing with civilians they should consider another profession (let alone carry a weapon).
Have you seen cops? Cops know one thing -- doing violence. They are already terrible at handling folks with mental health needs, folks who aren't neurotypical, folks from other countries or cultures... I don't want them anywhere near kids.
What do you feel should happen, then, in the rare cases where medical personnel need to treat someone who's uncontrollably violent? Police on their own can be (and are) trained to just physically restrain the guy indefinitely, but paramedics can't treat someone if they're thrashing around.
(I agree it'd be dystopian if police were themselves carrying around sedatives, but that's not happening here.)
I appreciate this discussion and your viewpoint, but I frankly fail to see your point.
What is being said is that the police shouldn't be the instance to handle incidents where what is really needed is counseling, or social working. We're talking about shifting funds to those and let police do what they have been trained for.
On that, as an aside... I will say that as black-belt in Aikido, I remain flabbergasted that police officers are not taught simple techniques to subdue or disable people/threats without resorting to deadly force.
To your original post I will also say that owning a gun does not make you and your family impervious to crime! You cannot protect your family with a gun, it doesn't give your family a bullet proof shield. On the contrary you will likely escalate a situation.
Your starting assertion: "The fact that you're asking me a question like that illustrates that you haven't read anything that I've said" is unnecessarily combative.
I was basing my question on the part of your comment where you suggested:
"How about we disarm all street cops"
I am generally in agreement that many first line encounters between cops and civilians could be better served by social workers, EMS, etc. but was curious about the idea of unarmed police in the US and how that might play out, especially in situations where the civilian is armed (which is not always known by dispatch nor the cops themselves, until it's too late).
I’m curious to understand why you think introducing a gun into this situation is going to make it any better?
We know from plenty of examples that in the scenario you describe there’s a high chance that the individual will end up shot by the police, and probably dead. We know police don’t have the training or the tools to handle this scenario well.
I don’t see how brining in people with better training could be a detriment. Worse case you ended up back where you started, the “violent and irrational” person ends up dead. Best case they successfully deescalate and render appropriate treatment, saving their life.
Exactly my point. Why should a so called trained officer of the law have more fear and less ability to preserve life in at a level of risk the average commuter or health care professional has? Nurse aides are confronted with more violent situations statistically and don't kill anywhere near the rates of cops.
In practice, very few police interactions require a firearm, so why have that as the default? If a police officer is working in a dangerous neighborhood, then they can exercise their right to carry a personal firearm at their own expense. However, any decision to use the gun would be 100% the individual’s risk as they won’t be able to hide behind their departments policies and procedures as an excuse to shoot people. So a police officer deciding to shoot someone is no different from your neighbor deciding to shoot someone. It might also incentivize individuals to seek out real firearms training on their own.
EMS people might be trained in mental health, but police officers are better prepared to deal with aggressive people, defend themselves (with batons, pepper spray, tasers, etc), and make arrests.
For dangerous situations that require firearms, you can call in a completely separate organization dedicated to that, like SWAT or whatever.
Such details are to be determined over discussion from experts yes. I think that cops should undergo on the job training and experience how to handle people, learning to exhaust every non-violent option they have before escalating if needed. There should be at least one or two cops who do have the privilege to carry be around when they are on duty/training, in case of emergency.
Basically I think it would be good if we could separate cops into two classes, armed and unarmed. And to earn the privilege to carry a gun, they need to prove themselves to prioritize deescalation first and foremost. They need to live up to the badge, actually working to serve and protect, not be a coward who needs to pull out a gun to handle an unarmed civilian.
The alternative is to have unarmed social workers, untrained in police work, accompany police officers to mental distress calls. This brings with it a host of other problems including, but not limited to, the possibility of the social worker being injured or killed in an altercation with an armed person in distress.
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