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Hi there CarnivalGal, while mitigation is a great theory, crime is not linear. In my personal experience early intervention works for substance abusers, alcoholics, and sometimes the homeless. There are those that are just plain criminals. I recently watched a documentary on the Austin Bomber which transpired in 2018. I had no idea while planning to move here that even occurred. It supports my opinion that Police are a necessity, for a myriad of reasons. In this case, the suspects m/o was that he just wanted to kill people. Had someone in his family or friends had seen any warning signs, those people would not have lost their lives. Kudos to Law Enforcement for identifying him in 18 days.
Watching a documentary on a thing hardly makes you a professional. Your "personal experience" is not in line with the research and best practices. I am a social worker.
I have a lot of respect for social workers. However, putting on an APD shirt is not practical. You are not a law enforcement officer as outlined in TCLEOSE and to the average citizen in crisis seeing someone with a Police Logo is misleading and dangerous, especially if you are unarmed.
By the way, this is a friendly discussion. I am by no means an expert, nor are you. Research and experience are two polar opposites. Having actually done the job, I support my stance but I very much respect your opinion. Who is the research being conducted by? People with an agenda. People who have never take any sort of use of force training, etc. I am not saying social workers should be shut out, but a more pragmatic approach is necessary.
So, maybe they don’t wear an APD shirt, but having a masters and license in social work is work. A bachelors level social worker goes through four years of undergrad and a year long internship. Then they take a licensing test. A masters level social worker goes through 63ish (that’s what mine was) of classes and two years of internships totaling 2500. Then they test. It’s work. We aren’t stupid. And someone who is going into victim services probably doesn’t have my experience, they have experience working in these types of crises. They say at least two years of experience. Austin is saturated with social workers. UT has a top ten program. Saint Ed’s has a program and Texas State has an on the ground and online program. Saying two years of experience is minimum, they’ll probably hire want to hire someone with Edy more. At that salary that’s unlikely. I’m in the mud $30 range right now.
Research as done by people with doctorates in social work with work published in academic journals that are then placed in academic books that MSWs read. I’m not in academia. I’m not able to pull up articles on it. This is, again, from my experience and what I’ve learned from my education.
Hopefully Harris County can divert some money away from the Sheriff's office to build the county mental health hospital. I bet the Sheriff is tired of running the largest mental hospital in Texas!
You can count on Abbott and the GOP state government to keep this inefficient setup running with their recent anti-defunding threat! After all, this is a red state that did not want to take funds for Medicaid expansion.
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Originally Posted by USMC0372
Who is the research being conducted by? People with an agenda.
Spoken by somebody who has never been to college! The graduate students expend a lot of effort in peer-reviewed and replicable research to obtain their degrees. The professors have to do methodical studies, in addition to teaching undergraduate and graduate students, to keep their jobs.
As you just admitted, "experience" is just a lot of on-the-job training. Law enforcement tends to operate on stereotypes and rules of thumb over hard science and facts.
Hi there CarnivalGal, while mitigation is a great theory, crime is not linear. In my personal experience early intervention works for substance abusers, alcoholics, and sometimes the homeless. There are those that are just plain criminals.
I've never really gotten this mentality, and I find it to be detrimental to society as a whole IMHO. Criminality isn't inherent. Neither is being a shining contributor to society. Behavior is a combination of nature and nurture, and descent into anti-social behaviors is usually a lifelong vicious cycle, in which many of the flaws in our justice systems often play a large role. Most of us are capable of most behaviors, often dependent on environmental factors completely outside of our control. You change the world by breaking generational cycles, by making the proper choices easier.
One of the bigger pieces of evidence for that is the plummet of violent crime that started in the early 90s nationwide. It occurred 18-20 years after both the phase-out of leaded gasoline and Roe vs. Wade. It also coincided with the implementation of a policing system called CompSTAT, where police finally figured out that you can use statistics to identify and prevent crime.
Any intervention-focused reforms implemented today are unlikely to directly measurable for 10-20 years because most of today's convicts and societal dropouts are already caught up in behavioral vicious cycles. Any direct help for them will likely just be a matter of supporting them so that they won't cause trouble that's more expensive than the support they receive. I'm frankly not sure if they'll ever be capable of reform, but they're human and deserve decency even if they aren't decent themselves. It's cheaper and safer for everyone that way.
In the same way, the culture of policing also has a lot of momentum. Any reforms in police training will take years to show up in the community because those who've been trained their whole careers to think of everyone in terms of "bad guys = beat up and/or put in jail" and "good guys = incapable of wrong" is unlikely to change quickly or at all.
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I recently watched a documentary on the Austin Bomber which transpired in 2018. I had no idea while planning to move here that even occurred. It supports my opinion that Police are a necessity, for a myriad of reasons. In this case, the suspects m/o was that he just wanted to kill people. Had someone in his family or friends had seen any warning signs, those people would not have lost their lives. Kudos to Law Enforcement for identifying him in 18 days.
I don't think that anyone would argue that police aren't a necessity, just that they aren't as much of a necessity as their purview of responsibilities suggests. We don't need promoted beat cops tracking down domestic terrorists, managing budgets, handling domestic violence, coordinating emergency evacuations, or handing out traffic tickets. We need certified professionals in forensic criminology, accounting, social work, planning, and traffic law respectively.
I respectfully disagree, not only did I serve my country, I have a Master's Degree and I am very well educated.
Ending that sentence with "agenda" was pretty loaded. Conflating that word with hypothesis is intellectually dishonest!
You were just mirroring the anti-intellectual attitude against research and reason in fashion right now (that began with the anti-evolution movement a century ago). Stereotypes usually form from logical fallacies, which research tries to separate correlation from causation. Anti-vaxxing and hydroxychloroquine are great examples.
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Originally Posted by USMC0372
I am curious to know if Austin has any outreach programs for the homeless. I see a lot of tent camps.
Houston is the leader in the country for decreasing homelessness. The current effort unified by the city's task force started a decade ago.
Austin already has some non-profit organizations and perhaps a municipal task force to combat this.
Homelessness increased by 0.3% from 2017 to 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), but chronic homelessness – those who have been homeless for a year or more, or at least four times in three years – decreased by 26% from 2007 to 2018.
These trends have also been playing out across Texas – except in Houston, which has emerged as a national leader in tackling homelessness. The Bayou City has decreased its homeless population by 54% since 2011, by one measure, as well as effectively eliminated homelessness among veterans. (Austin, San Antonio, and Abilene have also effectively eliminated veteran homelessness.)
I am curious to know if Austin has any outreach programs for the homeless. I see a lot of tent camps. I have only been here for a month but speaking to people that City has no real plan for them. How about mental health programs. As I am not a social worker nor a native Texan, curious to know about such things.
Domestic violence is one of the most dangerous situations a Police Officer can be put in. This has been proven statistically. Why put an unarmed social worker in a potential volatile situation with no weapon? Are they necessary for the victim after the call absolutely. To have them respond solely is a tragedy waiting to happen.
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Have you heard of an "tragedies" yet with social workers currently responding to DV situations? I have heard of a social worker being shot while trying to deescalate an intellectually disabled client, by an officer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooti...Charles_Kinsey
I also think you continue to neglect the fact that I have never said, nor has anyone else, that social workers will go out in place of police officers. They go in conjunction with officers and provide support when safe. I'm also assuming they undergo additional training to understand the policing process in these volatile situations. Please read over the link I shared at the start of this thread regarding an emergency social worker responder.
Hopefully Harris County can divert some money away from the Sheriff's office to build the county mental health hospital. I bet the Sheriff is tired of running the largest mental hospital in Texas!
We are spoiled in the Austin area by having a state hospital in our city. Granted, I don't know much about state institutions, it seems as though Harris county is served by the Rusk County Hospital. If you scroll to the second to last page you'll see that Houston is served by region 8, along with other east Texas counties. https://www.texasstateofmind.org/wp-...tal-Primer.pdf
Again, with limited knowledge and limited experience, the state hospital system is a monster and it's even harder to get someone into their system. Most inpatient mental health resources are funded by for profit hospitals.
Respectively, I wholeheartedly disagree. Doing some research, Austin has one of the longest Police Academies in the nation, 9 months combined with another few months of field training. Motor vehicle stops on most occasions are not so cut and dry, in fact they can either escalate or just be as simple as a motor vehicle infraction. What if it's a DUI? A social worker (not taking away from their education or value) simply isn't trained in Law Enforcement, Policing, the use of force, Texas Penal code.
Domestic violence is one of the most dangerous situations a Police Officer can be put in. This has been proven statistically. Why put an unarmed social worker in a potential volatile situation with no weapon? Are they necessary for the victim after the call absolutely. To have them respond solely is a tragedy waiting to happen.
Calls for service are not so cut & dry, I've learned this. A 9-1-1 hang up can turn into a Domestic Violence call or an ambush.
One year of training for one of the most important and sensitive roles in society is laughable, at least according to my best friend’s husband who’s worked for the Scottish police force his whole life. It’s laughable for most people trained in most critical professions.
Why would you assume the social worker would be unarmed or alone in a domestic violence call? They should be the ones in charge of those situations, not cops. Cops are trained in use of force, but very evidently not trained in penal codes, constitutional rights, or rules of engagement. And they for sure aren’t trained in behavioral health. They can be security on the perimeter if they want, but they don’t need to be in charge of volatile situations.
Motor vehicle infractions that turn violent occur because fugitives know an armed officer with an arrest quota is running their records. Parking patrollers and park rangers don’t approach the world like an occupying force, and it seems to work out for them. Better yet, most road safety issues can be solved with better design. Auto engineers, roadway engineers, and ride sharing apps have done more to make roads safer than a billion citations ever could.
Indeed, calls for service aren’t cut and dry, which is why one profession with one set of training shouldn’t be the ones in charge. Security during service calls is important, but that doesn’t mean the security personnel has the training or mindset to actually give most situations the best chance at resolving peacefully when they’re put in charge.
There’s also the whole issue of why the US has the highest violence rate in among rich countries and the highest incarceration rate of any nation. I believe it comes down to the fact that the “war on drugs” is unwinnable and simply causes an arms race. The amount of people who are effectively banned from ever having a decent job because of possession of recreational amounts of drugs is beyond ridiculous, and you better believe that they have targets on their backs for the rest of their lives.
We are spoiled in the Austin area by having a state hospital in our city. Granted, I don't know much about state institutions, it seems as though Harris county is served by the Rusk County Hospital. If you scroll to the second to last page you'll see that Houston is served by region 8, along with other east Texas counties. https://www.texasstateofmind.org/wp-...tal-Primer.pdf
Again, with limited knowledge and limited experience, the state hospital system is a monster and it's even harder to get someone into their system. Most inpatient mental health resources are funded by for profit hospitals.
We have a county hospital system here. Ben Taub is one of the Big 4 hospitals in the Texas Medical Center. The other one is a general hospital in another part of town that focuses on that community.
My suggestion is to add a dedicated mental hospital to the county system to assume the responsibility from the Mental Health Unit of the county jail. Harris County can be innovative in mental health care delivery, just like the City of Houston was proactive in reducing homelessness.
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