[nututv]

Hey now there's an idea. Send out sex workers instead of social workers, should tame things down for a few hours anyway.

[ColdNoMore]

Originally Posted by Bucco

To those who mock and malign this idea, it is not as new as you think and should be allowed to be tried.


"Two studies suggest that one in four people shot dead by the police have psychiatric conditions"

Riding shotgun - Why American departments are sending social workers to answer 911 calls | United States | The Economist

"These Cities Replaced Cops With Social Workers, Medics, and People Without Guns
And it worked pretty well."

These Cities Replaced Cops With Social Workers, Medics, and People Without Guns - VICE

In your last link...this says it all.

“The difficulty in policing is that we use a one-size-fits-all model,” says Barry Friedman, who runs New York University’s Policing Project. “Police just aren’t trained to do a lot of the things they end up doing.

They are trained for force and law. So you get force-and-law results.”

Which fits perfectly with a saying I believe explains a lot...but that I'm not sure I've ever shared previously.


"When you're a hammer...everything looks like a nail."

.

[Stu from NYC]

Originally Posted by nututv

Hey now there's an idea. Send out sex workers instead of social workers, should tame things down for a few hours anyway.

Well if the wife swings that way

[nututv]

Originally Posted by Stu from NYC

Well if the wife swings that way

haha

[Northwoods]

Originally Posted by allsport

Until you try it, do not criticize it. Nurses do it every day without the assistance of the police. What needs to be done is to send these people with specialized easily seen identification, with police waiting outside giving the specialized non violent interventionists the opportunity to stop the crisis. Guns blazing fixes nothing and using people from their own community to be trained in the interventions would stop those concerns. As a student nurse, I was sent into the worst neighborhoods, alone, to do public health nursing. I carried a black bag which was my ticket into the neighborhood and I never had any problems and that was the fire bombing sixties.

No... when you "defund" the police there isn't a police officer "waiting outside" for you. The money that paid for that police officer is now funding you... alone... to go in and diffuse the situation. And the social worker isn't going in to do public health (like you did many years ago), they are going in to deal with a domestic dispute. It's not really the same...

[Northwoods]

Originally Posted by PugMom

idk, maybe a hostage or suicide standoff? it's hard to tell without knowing exact situations. what do you guys think of social workers riding along with the cops? good or bad idea?

If you defunded the police... there isn't any money to have a social worker IN ADDITION to a police officer. Now... the social worker is funded from the money that used to pay for that police officer. The social worker goes in alone.

[Bay Kid]

Will they have handcuffs?

[beccaboo**]

My career as a master-degreed social worker has spanned 46 years. During this time I have had a broad scope of responsibilities from direct service, to administration to a private practice. I have worked in medical hospitals, the VA, mental health facilities and education. Even with the depth of my experience, I can tell you I would feel unprepared to handle the 911 calls. What compounds the response by social workers is that many in those roles will be newer to the profession and be even more unprepared to respond.
As an option, they could have social workers in tandem with the police officers.