Defunding Police not working out.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

An adjunct to this might be to restrict cops to dealing with things that require cops, and have social workers deal with the rest. I don't really see the need to send out a car and two cops with guns, batons, tasers, pepper spray, and body armour to deal with a homeless person sleeping on a bench. Maybe it would be better to reserve them for things like active shooter situations and robberies in progress.

Boru

Your solution SOUNDS good....

But......


In the real world?


Cops will tell you - rightly so - that the most dangerous calls they have been on SEEMED like not much at all till things went sideways in a big way in a big hurry.

You are putting a SHITLOAD of pressure on dispatchers - who frequently have an incomplete, unclear view of the situation. This isn' t TV with a script you get to follow.

What WILL happen is your social workers will get sent into what turns out to be a rather lopsided firefight. 
Keep in mind - with budget restraints being what they are - when you take on MORE social workers - you are going to have that many less cops. When the shit hits the fan - you might not have enough armed cops to help out. Or you could send in more targets....errr... social workers....



It' s the advantage of all cops being armed.

A lot of those situations that go sideways do so because cops are sent out to resolve them. The perception of cops - rightly or wrongly - is that cops arrest people and take them to jail. Cops simply showing up at, again, at a homeless guy on a bench heightens tensions.

Even cops don’t get into firefights all that often. Less that 5% of police call-outs (in the US) turn violent.

It’s perfectly possible to increase the number of social workers without reducing the number of cops - don’t be so quick to equate ‘defund the police’ with ‘fire a bunch of cops’. What I suggested would actually free up more cops to deal with the nightmare scenarios you’re concerned about.

Boru