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Until US cops stop treating mental health episodes as capital crimes, they should not be responding to mental health checks.
It's so dumb that we send the people who's directive for shooting is "failure to comply" to deal with people whose conditions are defined as "failure to comply"
I disagree. They're not a great choice, but the vast majority of mental health calls do not end up with folks shot. Or beaten.
But safety is a issue. For many of these? Cops need to go in. They're not getting called generally when there is not a problem.
It will reduce some of these though. If its "Tina" that every cop in the city knows? And is 90? AND weighs less then her age? Yeah something like these services work. If its "Lisa" the unknown? The cops will go first.
I disagree. They're not a great choice, but the vast majority of mental health calls do not end up with folks shot. Or beaten.
But safety is a issue. For many of these? Cops need to go in. They're not getting called generally when there is not a problem.
It will reduce some of these though. If its "Tina" that every cop in the city knows? And is 90? AND weighs less then her age? Yeah something like these services work. If its "Lisa" the unknown? The cops will go first.
Every country has people who go off their meds and rarely shoot a person going through a mental health episode. If we're going to send cops, they need to be explicitly trained and equipped to deal with even a hostile & non-compliant person.
There is little justification for the amount of cops killing someone who's condition is defined by reality break & failure to comply. If there are people in danger, they need to be told to leave the premise until police arrive.
It's absurd that "failure to comply" is both the definition of someone suffering a mental health episode and the justification for cops shooting them. We've effectively classified mental health episodes as capital crimes.
the mayor of nyc, and citizens who voted for him twice, obviously thinks social workers should deal with mental health calls instead of police. police officers will likely be happy to let social workers respond to those calls.
Last edited by texan2yankee; 02-22-2021 at 10:09 PM..
Location: Free State of Florida, Support our police
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EddieB.Good
Every country has people who go off their meds and rarely shoot a person going through a mental health episode. If we're going to send cops, they need to be explicitly trained and equipped to deal with even a hostile & non-compliant person.
There is little justification for the amount of cops killing someone who's condition is defined by reality break & failure to comply. If there are people in danger, they need to be told to leave the premise until police arrive.
It's absurd that "failure to comply" is both the definition of someone suffering a mental health episode and the justification for cops shooting them. We've effectively classified mental health episodes as capital crimes.
Please tell us about your experiences handling mental health calls. There are millions of mental health calls that the cops respond to without incident. At least get your facts straight before spouting off.
Weve done that in a city South of here years ago. Its worked exceptionally well, and been very cost effective. The social workers arent going into tense situations, the cops still are. But they are responding with them for some calls, and handling situations that dont require a police officer.
If you mess with them though, the cops are going to be there. Its proven to be very cost effective, and led to a lot of goodwill in the city where its done.
All for it! Why? Because people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed by cops!?
We should watch and see if it works, and talk about it. If it fails we should not do it. If it works we should. And if different places have different results we should find out why.
BAM! NAILED IT!
That is why I support states and cities doing things out of the norm even if the rest of us don't like the idea.
1) It's their area, it's their decision (obviously if it's something impacting other states to a great extent then no).
2) Let's learn! We have states legalizing hard drugs or taking aggressive police tactics, or the opposite etc. let's keep an open mind.
Cops respond to 10's of millions of mental health calls a year. That is a fact. The numbers of shootings vs the amount of calls is staggering low. An attempt to say that cops are 16x more likely to shoot someone in these events knowing full well how explosive these situations are is nonsense. Most of these calls are the worst of the worst. So yeah the numbers are higher but are pretty dam low to begin with.
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