7 ms·

Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem (2015)

71 points by infogulch 6y ago

ivalm 6y ago
I think this is the key point: > Sue Rahr, a former sheriff [...], put it this way: “We do our recruits no favor if we train them to approach every situation as a war. To do so sets them up to create unnecessary resistance and risk of injury.” If you treat everyone like they want to kill you, you telegraph that through your actions and mannerisms, and induce the very escalation you are worried about.
VHRanger 6y ago
Note that this is much more prevalent in the US than anywhere else. Part of it might be gun prevalence, but the problem seems to be largely cultural to me. Police Unions abhorrent behavior entrench it, too.
- iratewizard 6y ago
  Where besides the US do you see gang violence making cities deadlier than a warzone? The militarization of police seems to be a function of adapting to the job they're responsible for.
  - StreamBright 6y ago
    Mexico comes in mind. Interestingly it turned into a war zone after guns from the US started to show up.
    - jki275 6y ago
      No. Don't be ridiculous. The Cartels import weapons by the container load, and not from the US. And that's not including the ones they steal or just appropriate from their own government.
      - StreamBright 6y ago
        https://nypost.com/2013/12/01/book-excerpt-how-america-gave-guns-to-mexican-drug-cartels/ https://nypost.com/2013/12/01/book-excerpt-how-america-gave-...
        jki275 6y ago
        It's a nice story. Claiming violence in Mexico started because of an idiotic plan to trace 2000 guns in the border area in 2006 is absurd.
        StreamBright 6y ago
        Read again what I wrote. And please read wikipedia on the subject https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War
        jki275 6y ago
        I’m very well informed on the fast and furious scandal. I don’t care what Wikipedia has to say about anything - especially where guns are concerned.
  - brnt 6y ago
    No, it's a fight fire with fire mentality that causes militarization. From a European perspective the lack of preventative measures could seem laughable if it wasn't so serious. Mental health for starters. Gun availability obviously too. Police here (OK, not all Police traditions do this here either) take deescalation training far more than gun training. There's a few case studies on French-Dutch comparisons in that regard that should be enlightening. You don't need to win in a gunfight in order to win.
    - andi999 6y ago
      Actually I believe the biggest reason could be mundane. As far as I understand most US police officers are working alone. So even one unarmed sucker punch means game over. I would be scared. In Europe police patrol is usually 2 police officers, so there is much less worry, which allows you to deal with the situations more relaxed.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > From a European perspective I don't think there is a European perspective. We haven't had anything close to the gang crime problem in the US in a long time, and when we did have it, guns weren't a thing. It's obvious that there are lots of issues, but "look, we don't have them because we do X" doesn't work when we didn't have anything comparable in the first place. I'm certain that we would see very different policies if London, Paris or Berlin had the murder rate of Chicago, and it wouldn't be "let's spend more money on mental health".
      - brnt 6y ago
        I know many Americans won't (want to) see it that way, but yeah, that's precisely what we did. What you see in the US is not effective, it is however very old-testament. I guess it makes at least some feel better, fighting fire with fire.
        luckylion 6y ago
        > I know many Americans won't (want to) see it that way, but yeah, that's precisely what we did. No, it's really not, and "you're American, you just don't want to see it" is not an argument. And if it was, it wouldn't work, because I'm not American and am not living in the US. Born, raised and still living in Europe. That's how I know that we never had anything like the US situation in recent history. Hell, even during the world wars when criminals would've had a field day, it wasn't anywhere close.
  - nrser 6y ago
    Spending the night hanging out with people from Syria I think they might disagree with your depiction of US cities. Measurements in mm are different than those in lbs.
  - pwned1 6y ago
    I take it you’ve never read about or been to places in Central America, such as Guatemala City.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      That kind of makes his point though, doesn't it? Those places usually also see the militarization of police, or straight up the military taking on law enforcement duties.
  - empath75 6y ago
    Us cities aren’t deadlier than a warzone. I used to go to nightclubs in the most violent neighborhood in dc in the middle of the crack epidemic as a naive suburban white kid and never felt unsafe and the worst thing that ever happened was my car getting broken into. I’ve been to places in the developing world where drug gangs drive around on trucks with mounted machine guns. There’s nowhere in the US like that.
    - andi999 6y ago
      Not feeling unsafe doesnt mean it is safe (and vice versa).
      - empath75 6y ago
        Statistically it’s not even close. Even in really dangerous cities like Chicago or New Orleans, they pale in comparison to how many people are dying in Syria or even in places like San Salvador — and even San Salvador isn’t that bad.
  - olliej 6y ago
    Where aside from the US do you see police shooting unarmed people? The fact is that police decided to escalate their response to gun crime is entirely on them. The desire to turn things into a "war" between police and non-police validates the decision to use guns against police. After all they're soldiers. Further more the consistently abusive behavior of police and complete lack of consequences reinforces to abused communities that police are no different from any other gang, with the exception that they will never be arrested. That again justifies treating them as just another violent gang, and so use of equivalent force against them is reasonable. Police also are more violent, and push harsher charges, against specific communities. By doing that they've established that they are not operating fairly, and that lack of fairness further establishes police as an enemy.
m0zg 6y ago
Very good, adult take. Calm, balanced, and not anti-police.
- vore 6y ago
  Don't dismiss people being angry and upset at police right now like this. It's extremely disrespectful towards the very real problems they face.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    I'm not seeing anything dismissive in OP's remark. Opposing police brutality is not the same thing as being anti-police.
    - vore 6y ago
      "Very good, adult take. Calm, balanced" is pretty dismissive of people being rightfully angry.
      - zozbot234 6y ago
        So we shouldn't act as adults or be calm and balanced? People can rightfully oppose something in a reasonable way.
        danaris 6y ago
        That appears to be a strawman argument. Being calm and balanced is good, yes. But that's not the same thing as saying that anger is not justified, and that it automatically means that the angry person should be dismissed and their anger treated as a symptom of an immature or unbalanced person. Vore was simply noting that, given the current circumstances, m0zg's original comment could very easily be read as saying, "Ah, good, here's someone who's actually worth listening to. Not like those angry, irrational protesters."
        6y ago
ypeterholmes 6y ago
This article misses the point. These types of "cultural" issues are important but secondary- the issue is that the police are breaking laws and getting away with it because of qualified immunity. They need to be held accountable, otherwise is the culture really going to change?
- arkadiyt 6y ago
  Culture is _the_ problem, everything stems from the culture. Also qualified immunity only applies to civil liability, it does nothing to protect police from criminal prosecution (which still doesn't happen, because culture).
  - 6AA4FD 6y ago
    Are you sure it doesn't protect police from criminal prosecution? I don't see any mention of a distinction between civil or criminal violations in anything I have read about it. Furthermore this case[0] it seems to me could have been criminally prosecuted if not for qualified immunity. [0]: https://casetext.com/case/graham-v-connor https://casetext.com/case/graham-v-connor
- 6AA4FD 6y ago
  On the flip side, the cultural change will be very slow if police keep feeling pressured or entitled to break laws because of the warrior mentality, horribly injure or kill someone, and then get severely punished. I think that qualified immunity might be more important (because a change to that will force departments to change how they police) but it's a bit much to say that the article misses the point, especially when it was written in 2015 specifically about the "warrior mindset" not "how to end police brutality."
- treis 6y ago
  I saw a video of police breaking up looting by rushing in and hitting everyone they could with their batons. When that's the plan and the people in the charge think it's a good plan that's the root of the issue. To send people out there to do that and then charging them with crimes if they go too far seems a bit hypocritical to me. It needs to be a top down change where the police use the least violence possible and have the least amount of confrontation possible.
MattSteelblade 6y ago
It should be noted in the title that this piece is from 2015.
- dang 6y ago
  Good catch! Added now.
- kelnos 6y ago
  Given that, I'm curious to know if anything has changed in the last five years, or if the article still accurately describes police training today. I would guess that it does.
bredren 6y ago
A major problem I see is the idea of only one kind of social adjustment role: the uniformed police officer. There are situations where the warrior mindset are needed. We do need people who can deal with extremely dangerous situations involving lethal force. However, many, many situations need social workers more than they need warriors. If anything the warrior could back up their unarmed counterpart. Why aren’t there other roles with different capabilities that work in concert with warriors? I’m not sure it makes sense to only seek to retrain when probably a great share of existing police officers could be replaced with more effective counterparts with some of the same powers but completely different skills and assignments. It is teams of skilled specialists that solve difficult problems, why do we have only one person to mend so much of society’s challenging circumstances?
- pwned1 6y ago
  I’ve known a few officers and they usually refer to themselves as “social workers in uniform.”
  - sophacles 6y ago
    They don't know what "social worker" means then - social workers have the task of helping, not murdering, people. We should hold the cops to the standard they hold us: if there is not proof of innocence, or if they have the wrong pigmentation, or if they are near a citizen having a bad day, or the moon has a phase, its justified and heroic to fuck their life, no questions.
    - bredren 6y ago
      It’s just not always like this. If this is all you’ve seen, or all you believe current police do, then you aren’t seeing it all.
  - bredren 6y ago
    I have personal experience where a uniformed, armed police officer came to a situation and did nothing but offer their presence in the face of tragedy. The situation did not need a gun—or the ability to confront violence. It needed someone brave and empathetic and this person did that and I’ll never forget it.
CommanderData 6y ago
I don't think the problem is a select few American police officers, I feel its too widespread to blame it on a few bad cops. Without to sound predudice I think the problem IS cultural. It seems to be something related to American egos that is accelerated 1000x when moved into a position of authority like a police officer. I'm in the UK, and yes we have our problems however it seems reasoning or social skills of our officers are night and day and reflect behaviour observed of society as a whole.
- golemiprague 6y ago
  London had the same race riots over a black guy who was mistreated by police, how do you explain that? Also UK police doesn't have to deal with armed gangs and individuals, certainly not to the same level as the US police. So there are other factors there than ego.
- cal5k 6y ago
  I'm not sure it's entirely possible to dismiss cultural difference in the opposite direction, however. The Police Activity channel on YouTube has tons of unedited bodycam footage from officer-involved shootings and other events across America: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXMYxKMh3prxnM_4kYZuB3g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXMYxKMh3prxnM_4kYZuB3g I'd encourage you to watch the entire list of videos to get a sense for what policing is like in parts of America, and what circumstances lead to the use of deadly force. Some of them are difficult to watch, but it showcases both good and bad examples of how to handle extremely dangerous situations. It's not an enviable job - the number of videos that start out as a routine traffic stop with the cop having amiable conversation, and then rapidly escalate to a situation where the suspect is pulling a gun on the officer, is truly mind-blowing.
  - gabaix 6y ago
    The US has the highest gun ownership (1.2 per capita), double the country next on the list. When police officers from Europe come to visit, the first thing that surprise them is how tense the police is. They are constantly in fear of getting shot. Reducing civilian gun ownership would help a lot to reduce violence, cops and non cops alike.
slickrick216 6y ago
Has anyone considered a PTSD epidemic among the LE community. These people are sent out day after day to possibly hostile situations. Usually it’s not good news they come across due to the nature of the job. Some of them have likely seen colleagues be seriously injured or killed. As these protests have shown they face widespread hostility even when they haven’t actually done anything themselves individually. Cross that with the usual mix of mental issues present in a population and it seems to me like you have a situation where people forced to the edge snap. Like other roles in society they can’t complain about what’s wrong with them or they risk losing their careers and family’s financial security. Empathy cuts both ways, yes government injustice isn’t right but if we don’t understand people’s circumstances we blind ourselves to a possible solution.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  As much as I see the present situation as intolerable and inexcusable, I suspect chronic stress likely plays a role.
rland 6y ago
There are a few issues. One thing that I don't see mentioned very often is that a police officer is actually very rarely necessary. But they are called in anyway. There is a kind of litigiousness to American culture. Two people mad at each other? "Watch me call the cops." Someone nodding off near the front door? Call the cops. Domestic dispute? Call the cops. The cops are not really useful in any of these situations and, because of all of the problems mentioned here, often escalate the situation and make things worse. Cops frequently end up playing the role of social worker, mental health counselor, relationship mediator, addiction counselor... and with their incredibly violent and often racist attitudes the result is predictable. I am glad that finally these issues are being addressed. They have been festering for decades.
- sukilot 6y ago
  Nothing wrong with having one number to call for help. The problem is when only one kind of responder responds. That happens because we have too many armed, bored police and too few of other kinds of social services.

71 points by infogulch 6y ago

I think this is the key point: > Sue Rahr, a former sheriff [...], put it this way: “We do our recruits no favor if we train them to approach every situation as a war. To do so sets them up to create unnecessary resistance and risk of injury.” If you treat everyone like they want to kill you, you telegraph that through your actions and mannerisms, and induce the very escalation you are worried about.

VHRanger 6y ago

Note that this is much more prevalent in the US than anywhere else. Part of it might be gun prevalence, but the problem seems to be largely cultural to me. Police Unions abhorrent behavior entrench it, too.

iratewizard 6y ago
Where besides the US do you see gang violence making cities deadlier than a warzone? The militarization of police seems to be a function of adapting to the job they're responsible for.
- StreamBright 6y ago
  Mexico comes in mind. Interestingly it turned into a war zone after guns from the US started to show up.
  - jki275 6y ago
    No. Don't be ridiculous. The Cartels import weapons by the container load, and not from the US. And that's not including the ones they steal or just appropriate from their own government.
    - StreamBright 6y ago
      https://nypost.com/2013/12/01/book-excerpt-how-america-gave-guns-to-mexican-drug-cartels/ https://nypost.com/2013/12/01/book-excerpt-how-america-gave-...
      - jki275 6y ago
        It's a nice story. Claiming violence in Mexico started because of an idiotic plan to trace 2000 guns in the border area in 2006 is absurd.
        StreamBright 6y ago
        Read again what I wrote. And please read wikipedia on the subject https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War
        jki275 6y ago
        I’m very well informed on the fast and furious scandal. I don’t care what Wikipedia has to say about anything - especially where guns are concerned.
- brnt 6y ago
  No, it's a fight fire with fire mentality that causes militarization. From a European perspective the lack of preventative measures could seem laughable if it wasn't so serious. Mental health for starters. Gun availability obviously too. Police here (OK, not all Police traditions do this here either) take deescalation training far more than gun training. There's a few case studies on French-Dutch comparisons in that regard that should be enlightening. You don't need to win in a gunfight in order to win.
  - andi999 6y ago
    Actually I believe the biggest reason could be mundane. As far as I understand most US police officers are working alone. So even one unarmed sucker punch means game over. I would be scared. In Europe police patrol is usually 2 police officers, so there is much less worry, which allows you to deal with the situations more relaxed.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > From a European perspective I don't think there is a European perspective. We haven't had anything close to the gang crime problem in the US in a long time, and when we did have it, guns weren't a thing. It's obvious that there are lots of issues, but "look, we don't have them because we do X" doesn't work when we didn't have anything comparable in the first place. I'm certain that we would see very different policies if London, Paris or Berlin had the murder rate of Chicago, and it wouldn't be "let's spend more money on mental health".
    - brnt 6y ago
      I know many Americans won't (want to) see it that way, but yeah, that's precisely what we did. What you see in the US is not effective, it is however very old-testament. I guess it makes at least some feel better, fighting fire with fire.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        > I know many Americans won't (want to) see it that way, but yeah, that's precisely what we did. No, it's really not, and "you're American, you just don't want to see it" is not an argument. And if it was, it wouldn't work, because I'm not American and am not living in the US. Born, raised and still living in Europe. That's how I know that we never had anything like the US situation in recent history. Hell, even during the world wars when criminals would've had a field day, it wasn't anywhere close.
- nrser 6y ago
  Spending the night hanging out with people from Syria I think they might disagree with your depiction of US cities. Measurements in mm are different than those in lbs.
- pwned1 6y ago
  I take it you’ve never read about or been to places in Central America, such as Guatemala City.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    That kind of makes his point though, doesn't it? Those places usually also see the militarization of police, or straight up the military taking on law enforcement duties.
- empath75 6y ago
  Us cities aren’t deadlier than a warzone. I used to go to nightclubs in the most violent neighborhood in dc in the middle of the crack epidemic as a naive suburban white kid and never felt unsafe and the worst thing that ever happened was my car getting broken into. I’ve been to places in the developing world where drug gangs drive around on trucks with mounted machine guns. There’s nowhere in the US like that.
  - andi999 6y ago
    Not feeling unsafe doesnt mean it is safe (and vice versa).
    - empath75 6y ago
      Statistically it’s not even close. Even in really dangerous cities like Chicago or New Orleans, they pale in comparison to how many people are dying in Syria or even in places like San Salvador — and even San Salvador isn’t that bad.
- olliej 6y ago
  Where aside from the US do you see police shooting unarmed people? The fact is that police decided to escalate their response to gun crime is entirely on them. The desire to turn things into a "war" between police and non-police validates the decision to use guns against police. After all they're soldiers. Further more the consistently abusive behavior of police and complete lack of consequences reinforces to abused communities that police are no different from any other gang, with the exception that they will never be arrested. That again justifies treating them as just another violent gang, and so use of equivalent force against them is reasonable. Police also are more violent, and push harsher charges, against specific communities. By doing that they've established that they are not operating fairly, and that lack of fairness further establishes police as an enemy.

m0zg 6y ago

Very good, adult take. Calm, balanced, and not anti-police.

vore 6y ago
Don't dismiss people being angry and upset at police right now like this. It's extremely disrespectful towards the very real problems they face.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  I'm not seeing anything dismissive in OP's remark. Opposing police brutality is not the same thing as being anti-police.
  - vore 6y ago
    "Very good, adult take. Calm, balanced" is pretty dismissive of people being rightfully angry.
    - zozbot234 6y ago
      So we shouldn't act as adults or be calm and balanced? People can rightfully oppose something in a reasonable way.
      - danaris 6y ago
        That appears to be a strawman argument. Being calm and balanced is good, yes. But that's not the same thing as saying that anger is not justified, and that it automatically means that the angry person should be dismissed and their anger treated as a symptom of an immature or unbalanced person. Vore was simply noting that, given the current circumstances, m0zg's original comment could very easily be read as saying, "Ah, good, here's someone who's actually worth listening to. Not like those angry, irrational protesters."
        6y ago

ypeterholmes 6y ago

This article misses the point. These types of "cultural" issues are important but secondary- the issue is that the police are breaking laws and getting away with it because of qualified immunity. They need to be held accountable, otherwise is the culture really going to change?

arkadiyt 6y ago
Culture is _the_ problem, everything stems from the culture. Also qualified immunity only applies to civil liability, it does nothing to protect police from criminal prosecution (which still doesn't happen, because culture).
- 6AA4FD 6y ago
  Are you sure it doesn't protect police from criminal prosecution? I don't see any mention of a distinction between civil or criminal violations in anything I have read about it. Furthermore this case[0] it seems to me could have been criminally prosecuted if not for qualified immunity. [0]: https://casetext.com/case/graham-v-connor https://casetext.com/case/graham-v-connor
6AA4FD 6y ago
On the flip side, the cultural change will be very slow if police keep feeling pressured or entitled to break laws because of the warrior mentality, horribly injure or kill someone, and then get severely punished. I think that qualified immunity might be more important (because a change to that will force departments to change how they police) but it's a bit much to say that the article misses the point, especially when it was written in 2015 specifically about the "warrior mindset" not "how to end police brutality."
treis 6y ago
I saw a video of police breaking up looting by rushing in and hitting everyone they could with their batons. When that's the plan and the people in the charge think it's a good plan that's the root of the issue. To send people out there to do that and then charging them with crimes if they go too far seems a bit hypocritical to me. It needs to be a top down change where the police use the least violence possible and have the least amount of confrontation possible.

MattSteelblade 6y ago

It should be noted in the title that this piece is from 2015.

dang 6y ago
Good catch! Added now.
kelnos 6y ago
Given that, I'm curious to know if anything has changed in the last five years, or if the article still accurately describes police training today. I would guess that it does.

bredren 6y ago

A major problem I see is the idea of only one kind of social adjustment role: the uniformed police officer. There are situations where the warrior mindset are needed. We do need people who can deal with extremely dangerous situations involving lethal force. However, many, many situations need social workers more than they need warriors. If anything the warrior could back up their unarmed counterpart. Why aren’t there other roles with different capabilities that work in concert with warriors? I’m not sure it makes sense to only seek to retrain when probably a great share of existing police officers could be replaced with more effective counterparts with some of the same powers but completely different skills and assignments. It is teams of skilled specialists that solve difficult problems, why do we have only one person to mend so much of society’s challenging circumstances?

pwned1 6y ago
I’ve known a few officers and they usually refer to themselves as “social workers in uniform.”
- sophacles 6y ago
  They don't know what "social worker" means then - social workers have the task of helping, not murdering, people. We should hold the cops to the standard they hold us: if there is not proof of innocence, or if they have the wrong pigmentation, or if they are near a citizen having a bad day, or the moon has a phase, its justified and heroic to fuck their life, no questions.
  - bredren 6y ago
    It’s just not always like this. If this is all you’ve seen, or all you believe current police do, then you aren’t seeing it all.
- bredren 6y ago
  I have personal experience where a uniformed, armed police officer came to a situation and did nothing but offer their presence in the face of tragedy. The situation did not need a gun—or the ability to confront violence. It needed someone brave and empathetic and this person did that and I’ll never forget it.

CommanderData 6y ago

I don't think the problem is a select few American police officers, I feel its too widespread to blame it on a few bad cops. Without to sound predudice I think the problem IS cultural. It seems to be something related to American egos that is accelerated 1000x when moved into a position of authority like a police officer. I'm in the UK, and yes we have our problems however it seems reasoning or social skills of our officers are night and day and reflect behaviour observed of society as a whole.

golemiprague 6y ago
London had the same race riots over a black guy who was mistreated by police, how do you explain that? Also UK police doesn't have to deal with armed gangs and individuals, certainly not to the same level as the US police. So there are other factors there than ego.
cal5k 6y ago
I'm not sure it's entirely possible to dismiss cultural difference in the opposite direction, however. The Police Activity channel on YouTube has tons of unedited bodycam footage from officer-involved shootings and other events across America: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXMYxKMh3prxnM_4kYZuB3g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXMYxKMh3prxnM_4kYZuB3g I'd encourage you to watch the entire list of videos to get a sense for what policing is like in parts of America, and what circumstances lead to the use of deadly force. Some of them are difficult to watch, but it showcases both good and bad examples of how to handle extremely dangerous situations. It's not an enviable job - the number of videos that start out as a routine traffic stop with the cop having amiable conversation, and then rapidly escalate to a situation where the suspect is pulling a gun on the officer, is truly mind-blowing.
- gabaix 6y ago
  The US has the highest gun ownership (1.2 per capita), double the country next on the list. When police officers from Europe come to visit, the first thing that surprise them is how tense the police is. They are constantly in fear of getting shot. Reducing civilian gun ownership would help a lot to reduce violence, cops and non cops alike.

slickrick216 6y ago

Has anyone considered a PTSD epidemic among the LE community. These people are sent out day after day to possibly hostile situations. Usually it’s not good news they come across due to the nature of the job. Some of them have likely seen colleagues be seriously injured or killed. As these protests have shown they face widespread hostility even when they haven’t actually done anything themselves individually. Cross that with the usual mix of mental issues present in a population and it seems to me like you have a situation where people forced to the edge snap. Like other roles in society they can’t complain about what’s wrong with them or they risk losing their careers and family’s financial security. Empathy cuts both ways, yes government injustice isn’t right but if we don’t understand people’s circumstances we blind ourselves to a possible solution.

dredmorbius 6y ago
As much as I see the present situation as intolerable and inexcusable, I suspect chronic stress likely plays a role.

rland 6y ago

There are a few issues. One thing that I don't see mentioned very often is that a police officer is actually very rarely necessary. But they are called in anyway. There is a kind of litigiousness to American culture. Two people mad at each other? "Watch me call the cops." Someone nodding off near the front door? Call the cops. Domestic dispute? Call the cops. The cops are not really useful in any of these situations and, because of all of the problems mentioned here, often escalate the situation and make things worse. Cops frequently end up playing the role of social worker, mental health counselor, relationship mediator, addiction counselor... and with their incredibly violent and often racist attitudes the result is predictable. I am glad that finally these issues are being addressed. They have been festering for decades.

sukilot 6y ago
Nothing wrong with having one number to call for help. The problem is when only one kind of responder responds. That happens because we have too many armed, bored police and too few of other kinds of social services.