We need an option other than the police for people experiencing a mental health crisis. The police are not mental health professionals, and we shouldn't expect them to be. The police are enforcers, emphasis on "force." We need to establish a new agency of responders who are trained to deal with people who are experiencing a mental health crisis.
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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The was the whole point of the "defund the police" movement as they wanted to take that funding and put it toward alternatives to police for situations exactly like this but the right wingers turned off their brains and recast the meaning to be "the left wants to eliminate police."
“Re-allocate some police funding to support specialized co-responders!” just doesn’t have the same punch, does it?
Why not? Firefighters are often trained with EMT skills in emergency medicine. Why can’t cops get some training for mental health awareness and ways to handle situations. We act like training is perfect, but look at what cops do. Clearly there is room for improvement.
Firefighters, EMTs, and police are all first responders, and so it's necessary for them all to have at least emergency medical training. Yet, they are distinct agencies, because each job requires unique skills and training. I think police, and for that matter all first responders, should have mental health emergency training, just as they have medical emergency training, but I also think it would be useful for there to be a distinct agency that specializes in mental health emergency response, just as there are agencies that specialize in fire emergency and medical emergency response. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the police to fill this role, just as I think it would be unreasonable to expect the police to fight fires or provide all of the services of an EMT.
I saw the video of this. Cops went from exiting vehicles to shooting in seconds. There was no threat to their lives. Fucking monsters. You hear the people who called 911 wailing in despair at the outcome.
And the public response to this murder was met with even more over-reaction: