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From my reading on the topic, the general idea seems to be to cut police responsibilities and budget. One of the biggest problems is that police are used to res

From my reading on the topic, the general idea seems to be to cut police responsibilities and budget. One of the biggest problems is that police are used to respond to all kinds of issues for which they are not trained (e.g. non-violent mental health incidences). By cutting responsibilities of the police, their budget could be more efficiently allocated for responding to situations for which they have been trained.

nemo44x 6y ago
How do you know if a specific “mental health incident” is not going to be violent? What if someone is walking in the street, naked, and screaming things? Are they violent? Are they mentally ill? Are they on drugs? I get the intention here but I don’t think I’ve really seen anyone ask why we police this way. Is there a lesson we are forgetting? It’s like the tale of the new property owners that come across a fence that appears random. They’d be wise to verify why the fence was put there before removing it.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  A lot of countries have mental health response teams that work with the police to balance the safety of the individual in crisis with public safety. Seems like it’s worth looking into.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
    Many if not most large cities already have this or something like it. Also, I think your implicit assumption is incorrect (that the police typically don’t have the individual‘s safety in mind, or that they only have the general public’s safety in mind).
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      My implicit assumption is that rank and file police officers regularly lack the years of psychological training required to appropriately respond to these kinds of incidents.
- guptaneil 6y ago
  > why are we policing this way? Because we created police forces to round up slaves and then just kept adding more responsibilities to them. In fact, before we had ambulances, police officers would just throw the injured/sick in the back of their paddy wagon and drive them to a doctor. Frustrated with the staggeringly high death rate for people in his community, a black doctor eventually created the idea of an ambulance and specialized paramedics who handle that situation instead of police. It was so effective, white neighborhoods started calling him too and we eventually adopted the idea everywhere. The idea of defunding the police means to do more of that. Trained specialists for different types of calls who are dispatched based on need. Much like how police will often show up with an ambulance to make sure it’s safe but then leave pretty quickly once they confirm it is, the same could be done with other non-violent calls like the one you described. This isn’t rocket science, and it’s well steeped in research. We just need to be able to get over our biases.

nemo44x 6y ago

How do you know if a specific “mental health incident” is not going to be violent? What if someone is walking in the street, naked, and screaming things? Are they violent? Are they mentally ill? Are they on drugs? I get the intention here but I don’t think I’ve really seen anyone ask why we police this way. Is there a lesson we are forgetting? It’s like the tale of the new property owners that come across a fence that appears random. They’d be wise to verify why the fence was put there before removing it.

throwaway894345 6y ago
A lot of countries have mental health response teams that work with the police to balance the safety of the individual in crisis with public safety. Seems like it’s worth looking into.
- SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
  Many if not most large cities already have this or something like it. Also, I think your implicit assumption is incorrect (that the police typically don’t have the individual‘s safety in mind, or that they only have the general public’s safety in mind).
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    My implicit assumption is that rank and file police officers regularly lack the years of psychological training required to appropriately respond to these kinds of incidents.
guptaneil 6y ago
> why are we policing this way? Because we created police forces to round up slaves and then just kept adding more responsibilities to them. In fact, before we had ambulances, police officers would just throw the injured/sick in the back of their paddy wagon and drive them to a doctor. Frustrated with the staggeringly high death rate for people in his community, a black doctor eventually created the idea of an ambulance and specialized paramedics who handle that situation instead of police. It was so effective, white neighborhoods started calling him too and we eventually adopted the idea everywhere. The idea of defunding the police means to do more of that. Trained specialists for different types of calls who are dispatched based on need. Much like how police will often show up with an ambulance to make sure it’s safe but then leave pretty quickly once they confirm it is, the same could be done with other non-violent calls like the one you described. This isn’t rocket science, and it’s well steeped in research. We just need to be able to get over our biases.