Zero arrests in 6 months of health care professionals replacing police officers

You do realize that jails (not prisons) already house people quite long due to various dubiously legal reasons?

Also that we got rid of most asylums so the risk of being committed is quite low by the pigeonhole principle?

Police officers can end your life against your will with no trial, so I see anything being an improvement over that.

Yes, from the title I had expected it to be about health officials ignoring the law in instituting covid related restrictions. We definitely don't need more power in the hands of unaccountable technocrats.

This isn't changed by an arrest being the first step. As an EMT I frequently transported people to hospitals (or from hospitals to psychiatric facilities) following their arrest. This just avoids the extraordinary cost to both society and the individual that comes along with an arrest being part of the process.

The medical authoritarian system you're worried about already exists and frankly I saw no evidence of its abuse. Most psych facilities are over-enrolled and have no interest in keeping people around once they're stable enough to be released - which is a far cry from having healed or become functioning members of society.

Do you live in an area with high homeless rates? As in, "there's a homeless camp of tents consuming multiple city blocks"-level of homelessness?

It's horrible for everyone in the city--most of all for the homeless.

These people suffer from mental health or drug issues and need help. The status quo of "leave them to fend for themselves" is simply an unacceptable outcome.

The system launched by the DPD may not be perfect, but it's a whole lot better than what existed before. It's a huge step in the right direction.

Explain what "insurance" has to do with it?

>No one is talking about the very big risk associated with this, that mental health professionals can commit you against your will with no trial

So it's better to be suffocated on the sidewalk for the crime of selling single cigarettes?

It’s still a step up in my opinion. This problem is also heavily mitigated by body cams.

Well, there are places discussing this... just not anywhere which is for “defunding the police”

That being said, totally agree. This will be and probably already is being abused.

If you think cops can’t commit you against your will I surely hope you never come up against their guns and nearly total lack of accountability.

I feel like this point is not made in good faith especially considering your other comments specifically praising cops and denigrating BLM activists.

To address your point however, it’s still a huge step up from having an arrest record in addition to being committed.

What is the difference between a psych ward and a jail? No difference in tv shows, except they also drug you, do weird experiments, and you could get killed by fellow inmates without a problem. If getting committed to a psych ward replaces prison it sounds much worse.

It varies by state. In California, it’s essentially impossible to commit someone (source: I tried and failed, despite written permission from the person pre-episode, the blessing of their doctor, and the blessing of their family, multiple police reports from third parties, a divorce, eviction, repos, etc, etc.)

In CA if you do somehow manage to maliciously commit someone, they’re held for up to 24 hours, and an independent doctor assesses them. Also, there can be civil penalties (as in the article you cite, where the victim successfully sued the hospital).

If I had to choose between the two ridiculous extremes, I’d choose the Texas model.

Is the risk alone a "very big" risk? Or are you saying the difference in risk of this happening with a cop vs. a medical person is a "very big" difference? Are cops not also able to commit someone involuntarily? Why are you talking about objective "very big risk" without comparing it to the current situation and what is different about this?

I did a google search for "can a police officer commit someone to a mental ward" and this is the first result, from harvard: https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2014/11/25/short-ter....

This says that a police officer is also able to commit someone in most jurisdictions. Why didn't you also mention this fact?

FUD

> No one is talking about the very big risk associated with this, that mental health professionals can commit you against your will with no trial

Increasing cop presence won't fix that problem. In multiple jurisdictions, cops can also refer you to be involuntarily committed.

So we're not creating an extra judicial system that has no checks and balances, that system already exists and cops are a part of it. We're talking about the potential benefits of removing one harmful part of the equation. If you want to also talk about the negatives of involuntary commitment and make progress in that area, that's totally worth examining as well, but it's not an argument for flooding the streets with more cops.

Getting arrested doesn't mean you can't be involuntarily committed afterwards.

Also note that in some cases, getting arrested and thrown in a holding cell can on its own be just as traumatic of an event as being held for an involuntary mental evaluation -- particularly if someone is genuinely suffering from a mental attack. And arrests don't require trials either. A sizable portion of the people in our jails have never been convicted of crimes, they're just stuck there because they can't pay cash bail.

This is a dangerously bad take. Real progress is being made by this change and the assumptions you’re making risk taking wind out of its sails over essentially a non-issue.

Uh, citation needed? Getting committed 'because their insurance was good' is likely not an issue here, as ~70% of the interventions were with homeless people.

Here's the actual report: https://wp-denverite.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sit...

"[T]he STAR van provided transportation to 41% of its calls for service where an individual's information was recorded. Of those incidents (107), the most common locations were a shelter or homeless services (30), the walk-in crisis center (24), or a hospital (18)."

It's unclear how many of these would involve an involuntary commit, and similarly unclear how the outcome would compare to a police encounter, which often comes with its own special brand of involuntary commit. One of the report recommendations is to create a longitudinal study to assess outcomes.

I imagine this also increases the surface area of interactions resulting in removal firearms from people, for reasons of mental health status.

Those people may, or may not deserve it.

E.g. California has a statute for 'mandatory relinquishment' of firearm, based on a mental health professionals findings [1] .

[1] - https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

The best part is the bill you get after being involuntarily committed!

What you're worried about is reasonable but it doesn't seem to have much to do with the article.

There's no mention of the mental health clinician and EMT in the van grabbing people, throwing them in the van, and hauling them off to be committed.

Instead they seem to be sympathetic listeners who can help with problems. Not solve, probably, and probably not permanently but anything that helps keep people from getting shot or locked up in jail is good.

First, that seems needlessly absolutist. We're literally talking about upending decades of emergency response practice here, surely it should be reasonable to talk about tweaks to the process (mandatory judicial hearings within N days of mental health detentions seem very reasonable to me) without demanding that a change be thrown out because of a theoretical problem.

Second, is there data here? I mean, the article lists 748 tracked incidents. Did any even lead to an involuntary hospital admission? Shouldn't we figure this out first?

Inventing terms like "medical authoritarianism" seems like more noise than signal, basically. Surely the fourth amendment as it stands can speak to the needs of mental health cases just as it can accused criminals.

> No one is talking about the very big risk associated with this, that mental health professionals can commit you against your will with no trial,

We've had a program like this for years here in Eugene Oregon. It's called CAHOOTS.

One of the cornerstones of the program is it's all voluntary. There is no use of force, no dragging people off anywhere. People show up with a van and some basic medical supplies and help people. If the people don't want help and the only alternative is some form of restraint, they call the police.

They almost never end up calling the police because most people just want a little help and a patient person talking to them gets it done.

The fact that these people never themselves do anything against people's will is what makes this work so well.

The police have the authority to place a person on a 48 hour medical hold, and will threaten to use that authority if you don't do what they tell you. They'll use it for something like a person who passes out not wanting to go to the hospital, even if they are with a friend who can take care of them if there is really an issue. I'd probably trust this crew in Denver more than I would a random police officer in making that assessment.

Portland had a similar program. It worked GREAT. (I am out of the city and have not kept up. Some form of it may still be a thing.)

Now, in that program they could hold you for 72 hours tops. No criminal record, no arrest, just a record private to that program for maintaining patient history. No attorneys, no bail, nothing. Outreach staff were deputies well trained in deescalation and conflict resolution as well as EMT and other related first responder skills. They do not perform law enforcement and need their status to execute the program tasks only.

We used to do that with law enforcement. We don't today. Some say we should. Some say we can't. No judgement from me. That is just the current lay of the land we all live with today.

These programs offer a strong, effective, humane option and they save a lot of money.

It saw a lot of use dealing with the following:

Drugs and alcohol inebriation, violence and general inability to do self care.

Homeless

Mentally Ill

Temporary mental distress.

Say one ends up there flat out hammered. Ok, you stay, until you aren't. Same for most drug scenarios.

The primary criteria for release? Not being hammered and or not being an asshole. This was the right thing to do almost every time too.

Worked great as a more serious crime prevention, and self harm reduction.

They could escalate to the court system, or a hospital, and or begin treatment at the integrated detox facility. All anyone need do was ask.

For homelessness, it typically required something be going on, like people going to die, or who were otherwise at some grave risk.

Those people could also just reach out. A ride in the van later, they can clean up, sober up, and then tap social services, or get into a shelter, temp housing, depending, or detox.

Police could DEescalate to this program as well and did so frequently.

People served by this program did not get criminal records, nor did they get a mental health record.

What they did get was help, and where it made sense, some tough love, and hard, lucid talk.

A significant percentage of the staff were former street people who had entered the program, got themselves good and then stuck around to help others. These people really matter. They have been there and are highly effective.

At the time, it was nationally recognized as a strong alternative to the typical judicial system grinder chewing lives up rather than lifting them out.

Here is something one of those people told me, and before I write it, I have in depth knowledge of the program via my spouse who worked front line outreach for many years:

Help buys time. Real help is sans judgement too. Time is what people in trouble need. When they get it, they have an opportunity to make different choices, and when they do, they are no longer people in trouble.

They become people getting out of trouble, improving. This is what they, and everyone else really need.

Nobody knows what reaches people. We only know when we continue to try some of them are reached and when we try harder, with genuine concern and zeal, more are reached.

Just reaching someone often is not enough. They fall back, need more time.

This is as good as it all gets.

Being human can really suck. Us lucky ones, who do not currently experience that suckage can count ourselves lucky and also for the help we may one day, ourselves need.

That, at the core, is what these programs and others like them are, or need to be about. When they are, they work.

Simple as that.

> See https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosalindadams/intake for an example of what I mean.

I stopped reading right after the patient admits to suicidal thoughts to a therapist.

That can easily get you committed against your will, and for good reason.

Nobody talks about how difficult it actually is to commit mentally ill people in many places.

Case in point, San Francisco, where severely mentally ill homeless people abound, many of whom who cannot look after themselves, and are left to suffer and die in the street out of respect for their civil liberties. Or those who terrorize neighborhoods for years on end, and everyone looks the other way out of respect for their civil liberties.

Civil liberties are important, but prioritizing civil liberties to an extreme, above all else, is often harmful for the individuals they’re supposedly serving.

A cop in Seattle was found to have involuntarily committed multiple people because he had a crush on the EMT who had to come transport them. I don't think keeping police involved is going to improve any of the things you care about.

> No one is talking about the very big risk associated with this, that mental health professionals can commit you against your will with no trial, which is an erosion of civil liberties (incarceration without trial). Having known several friends who got committed and held against their will in psych wards when there was no good reason to, because their insurance was good, this is an issue.

In California, this doesn't seem to be true. I got to see this in action from the sidelines. Within 24 hours of being committed, the patient will have an advocate appointed for them and within 72 hours the patient will be released unless the health team can put up justifications that pass the advocate AND then judicial scrutiny. The doctors can kick up a fuss, but 7 days is the limit before it MUST pass a judge.

I got to watch this in action, and the advocate was MUCH more aggressive on behalf of the patient than if the same person had been arrested and was relying on a public defender.

I see your point, but it’s worth considering that the tradeoff is potentially seeing said people shot by an armed officer, or thrown into jail where they’re likely to be hurt, abused, and otherwise suffer.

If anything, I wouldn't worry about this given the article. The majority of the incidents shown are homeless people berating retail staff over welfare card issues; technically they would be charged with trespassing because the police have to be called to make them leave the store.

The example given was a mentally ill woman who had issues buying food with her debit card.

If anything, it looks more like a crew of people handling nuisances committed by "regulars" as they pop up. The danger is probably they DON'T commit as much as they could, and put out fires rather than secure help. That is, they just keep enabling the nuisance calls.

I'd be worried too about overreliance on this. If the guy suddenly pulls a gun or a knife on what was just being a public nuisance, you are having more or less medical workers in danger of their lives.

That is terrifying.

I don't see how that risk has increased. It's pretty normal for police officers to call paramedics and mental health professionals in when subjects show signs of mental issues and substance abuse (there are even laws requiring them in some places). If the subject is in lockup or on the street by the time they arrive makes no difference since they have the exact same power to involuntarily commit them.

Now, whether that power is something that should be more regulated is a different question entirely. I believe there is an appeal process for being committed and it can go to trial, so it's not like it's entirely authoritarian. If signs of abusing this power are found, then of course, something should be done about it, but again, who was the first respondent really doesn't matter in that discussion.

EDIT: I read the linked article and holy shit, the US health system really is fucked. Honestly, when the incentives are that misaligned, I can see why you were worried (I was looking at this from a 1st world perspective; mild offense at the US intended). Maybe it would be smart to add an additional sanity check to the STAR system, but of course, until your healthcare mess is sorted, that's like putting a bandaid over a stab wound.

> No one is talking about the very big risk associated with this, that mental health professionals can commit you against your will with no trial

Police can arrest you and hold you against your will with no trial, for a limited period of time (e.g., 48 hours excluding Sundays and holidays is a common tule, IIRC), on the premise that it is pending charges for criminal behavior (which may or may not be filed.)

Mental health professionals (and, in many jurisdictions, law enforcement officers and others, too, can initiate this) can hold you against your will and with no trial, on the premise that it is for emergency psychiatric evaluation, for a limited time (72 hours is common.)

Further involuntary detention, in either case, requires judicial process.

I'm not seeing a particular additional danger here.

Presumably no arrests made though means people didn't fight the medical professionals trying to incarcerate them? So I assume most of them went voluntarily.

Indeed. It went the way Thomas Szasz described when he wrote The Therapeutic State [0].

It's a common trend in covertly authoritarian governments, but not only, to be able to remove people from the public without a fair trial: just question their sanity and have a doctor sign them in. Sometimes it isn't even the government, but someone well connected who needs someone else removed.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6680331-the-therapeutic-...

If you’re high on drugs, yelling scary stuff, acting violently without technically doing anything illegal. and threatening to kill yourself, I’d restrain you myself if I could. What’s the alternative to locking you up or waiting until you hurt someone & shooting you dead? You’re out of your mind, ruining everyone’s day, and you need a timeout to get your shit together, so if you wanna act like a child with no regard for the well-being of those around you, I’d have zero problems with sending you to your room until you cool down. It just so happens your room is a padded cell at the local mental health facility.

> We should not create an extra judicial system that has no checks and balances

You should be way more concerned about police brutality then.

This is a miserable top comment. I also have a low opinion of the field of psychology, but cops can have you committed (and do) by bringing you to be evaluated by mental health professionals. Medical professionals can't shoot you.

There's nothing in the article about creating a shadow mental health justice system. What they have is a van containing blankets and food, driven by two social workers.

> No one is talking about the very big risk associated with this, that mental health professionals can commit you against your will with no trial, which is an erosion of civil liberties (incarceration without trial). Having known several friends who got committed and held against their will in psych wards when there was no good reason to, because their insurance was good, this is an issue.

Do you have a citation for this being a real side effect of the type of program listed here? The program as described in this piece seems novel and this article certainly makes it sound like a success.

I know engineers and programmers like to poke holes and look for edge cases that might break any potential solution, but hopefully we can allow ourselves to celebrate the victories when we see them without letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.

This is actually a big issue with child/family services as well. A lot of what they do is extra-judicial, though in theory there is often judicial review... eventually. This is coming from a foster parent. Don't get me wrong, a lot of these services are needed, but you would hear stories of abuse by the system.

Extra-judicial threats are something everyone should be on guard against.

The problem you describe is real, but this program is a net positive (even in terms of the problem you're concerned about). Cops escalate mental health related scenes, which leads to people getting arrested and then put in a hold (which often gets extended).

If a social worker is able to resolve the situation without getting the cops involved, a cop isn't going to get personally offended that someone in crisis isn't "complying" and feel the need to punish them.

> Having known several friends who got committed and held against their will in psych wards

I don’t believe you

If you don't mind, what country do you live in and/or what thought process led you to "medical authoritarianism"? I would like more background on this, because it seems relatively absurd for the United States, where we struggle to even get a doctor involved when they clearly should be.

There are a few issues with your statements. The first being that the staff of this program have no incentive to "commit you against your will". Why would they do that? I work in healthcare and have met people that work in these types of programs. By and large they do it because they care, the stress and risk you get from working with these populations isn't worth the money.

I work in Canada, so perhaps it's different in your country, but to be commited to a mental health facility here, a trained physician needs to "form" you, basically sign forms stating that you are a danger to society if not treated. There are strict laws surrounding this, it's not just some random decision.

Lastly, you say this will lead to some "medical authoritarianism". Programs like these, as well as the ability to commit people to mental health facilities has been around forever, yet I see no evidence of this medical authoritarianism you speak of.

In these situations the Police basically have 2 options.

- Take into custody (Which could mean being committed)

- Shoot

I'll take my chances with trained health/mental health professionals who can understand "I took too much", or I'm having a mental health crisis and while I might seem "out of control" I'm really harmless. Frankly if those health professionals think I need to be committed I probably should be committed.

The police can take you into custody and commit you as well, but if you are having a mental health crisis, and can't really follow the rigid police directions more than likely it's going to end poorly, because the police will do what's necessary to take you into custody, including killing you.

Agreed. It’s worth noting that your concerns absolutely have precedent.

In the USSR and other 20th century states, committing people against their will to mental health asylums was a very common way of dealing with political and religious dissidents.

They also like to do that with whistleblowers:

"Mollath's forensic incarceration for seven years and the surrounding legal judgments became the basis of a public controversy in Bavaria and the whole of Germany when at least some underlying elements of his supposedly fabricated paranoid story about money-laundering activities at a major bank turned out to be true after all. Mollath himself had consistently claimed there was a conspiracy to have him locked up in a psychiatric care ward because of his incriminating knowledge; evidence that turned up in 2012 made his claims appear plausible."

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustl_Mollath

I would be shocked if the social workers riding around in vans are allowed to commit people. Social workers are kind of like nurses in that very few of them hold a PHD and they generally aren't allowed to diagnose or prescribe(varies by state and education level). They can provide all sorts of support, advice, counseling, etc to people in crisis, but when it comes to people who need to be committed, social workers mostly call 911 and hand it off to the cops, same as the rest of us. They can refer you for a voluntary psyc eval with a psychologist, or advise the judge that it might be a good idea to send you for an involuntary one rather than just sending you to prison, but they have very little power to decide anything for you. And if they're even remotely competent and you're not a blatant menace to society, then they're generally trying to keep you safe, stable, and out of institutions as much as reasonably possible. The whole ethos of social work is very different than psychology or law enforcement. It's very much focused on what concrete, practical things can be done to improve your health, happiness, safety, and quality of life. A lot of times it's simply hooking people up with services that they aren't savvy enough to find or access without help, or helping them get through stressful situation without falling apart and going to jail, using drugs, etc.

Really big fan of this approach. I'm often afraid to call the cops because I don't want them stepping into places where they aren't going to be helpful. Especially in more tense situations that may involve illegal substances or other grey area activities.

We usually don't want anyone getting in trouble, we just want a tough situation sorted out in a healthy way.

While I support the approach I'm not sure Eugene is the best example. There is a huge homeless problem here and police don't respond, including when I wake up in the middle of the night to someone sticking their flashlight in my window (from my locked back yard and they came right up to my back door) nor the homeless man that was sleeping against my bedroom wall and yelling all night about the CIA's listening device in his teeth. I've also had them break into my backyard and turn off my electricity (fun way to wake up freezing). But then again, I'm not sure police should be responding because they think it is appropriate to shoot down Peal (Toshi's towards Safeway) when some dude steals their vehicle and is driving *away* from them (I'd get it if they were driving towards the cops but that's not what happened).

The program is good and I'm glad less people are dying from it, but the problem is very messy and there's still a lot that needs to be done to build upon it. My issue is that many times people make these first steps and then just stop. The homeless problem has only seem to grow since I've been here and covid has made it far worse. Living in Eugene it doesn't feel like the city or state is doing what they can to appropriately fix things. It more feels like people are patting themselves on the back and calling themselves woke while making near meaningless improvements. I don't blame the homeless people for these actions as much as the people that have the power to fix the issues. People do the above actions when desperate. No one wants to live in a tent under the bridge when it is rainy and cold. We can be humane and solve the problem and that's what I want to see my taxes go to. After all, I pay more taxes here than I do in California.

Throwaway because I want to keep my main account somewhat anonymous.

I found lot about CAHOOTS from the Daily Show a few weeks ago. Here's the episode: https://youtu.be/D3Z6uEfpTog.

That's a terrible set of choices available. What could you expect the police to do, anyway?

I feel like most communities could really use a city-government-backed non-emergency medical dispatch. Not the ambulance/EMS (which is for emergencies and/or for bringing people to the hospital); not the police (who are armed and trained to respond with violence); just medical-ish people who could be called out to those in need of some important-but-not-urgent medical attention.

It could even just be a volunteer service of community members with good upper-arm strength, first-aid training, and an extended form of Good Samaritan-law protections. Semi-professional first responders, with no other qualification than being a first responder.

So basically, lifeguards. For places other than pools.

Some communities that don't have many fires dispatch their firefighters for this, and that works pretty well. But most fire units don't have enough downtime for that to be workable.

Here in Berlin we have a service for exactly this called the Wärmebus (warm bus) run by Red Cross and the city. Social workers come out in a van, talk to the person, help them however possible.

If they're willing to go to a shelter, they'll take them there. If not, they'll give them a cup of hot tea/coffee and whatever they need to stay warm: a jacket, sleeping bag, blankets, etc.

https://www.drk-berlin.de/angebote/mitmachen/waermebus.html

This is also my experience with the police. I've had to call them 5 times in my life, and not once did those calls result in any sort of action being taken. In fact, in the most recent one, the operator forgot to hang up the call and openly mocked me to her coworker while I sat there listening. It's maddening.

Especially in a country where the police kill so many people every year, I can't help but wonder what the purpose of this system even is if they can literally lie to your face saying they'll send someone and just not.

I would assume that if the mental health professional can't resolve the issue, then they would call the police to arrest them, no?

From the article: A young program that puts troubled nonviolent people in the hands of health care workers instead of police officers [emphasis added]

I wonder what the metrics are for police officers when dealing with non-violent people (with mental disturbances)

Seems homicides are going up, which would not support the idea that this makes police more effective.

https://www.denverpost.com/2021/01/31/denver-2020-crime-homi...

Exactly this. I hope that this program works, but we need to be measuring the actual outcomes here, not just saying "no arrests". It's easy not to arrest anyone. What's hard is not to arrest anyone without the crime rate going up.

Reducing arrests is itself a goal.

Jail can be a horrible traumatizing experience and/or a bad influence. You don't need a conviction and a prison sentence to be subject to the harms of incarceration.

I’ve done a fair bit of contract work with a few law enforcement organisations. One department I was working with was getting a lot of pressure because emergency callers were waiting on the phone for way too long. The commissioner hired an outside agency to triage emergency calls. They’d basically just answer the phone and put you back on hold. They started tracking the time the call was answered from when the triage call center picked up. Reported a huge improvement back up the chain. I read a news paper article about how successful they’d been in reducing wait time a little while later.

All the derision we give KPIs in software development applies just as equally to other areas of society too.

Here's one: Deaths.

Importantly, the closure of those institutions is what created the homelessness crisis.

This trend will be interesting. We mainly abandoned the practice in the late 1960’s and turned more towards policing by the 1980’s. Mental institutions got a really bad reputation and some of it justified as we were committing people for things like being gay. Lobotomies became unbelievably common. The whole concept was scary.

So today there’s a general distaste for policing tactics which although very effective, people seem to be souring on the costs - high prison populations, a feeling of profiling, and suspected unfair treatment of certain demographics. Criminal justice is in a crisis right now and people demand change.

So things like this have been becoming popular. I wonder how long it will be before it’s widespread and prison budgets are rerouted to mental health facilities?

I’m most curious about what will be considered a mental health issue and how politicized that will be.

I’m very cautiously optimistic that it could be a change for the better if administrated well.

> Agnews Insane Asylum in Santa Clara, which [...] is now an Oracle facility.

For some reason this is hysterical to me.

My understanding is that this program is different - they’re not just locking people up, but the actually have the resources to offer them help.

> "The US used to have more of that. The men in the white coats would come to take crazies away."

The nice young men in their clean white coats are coming to take me away Haha!

Don't know if you intended a song reference there, but I did enjoy it.

That said. This isn't what the people in this program do. They help people. Give them a ride to a shelter, give them a little food and some water. Give them a little mental support and somewhere quiet and safe to be for a little while.

They don't take them away unless they want to go somewhere.

I believe you are mistaken about welfare checks being unlikely to end in arrest. It's not uncommon for police to find reasons, or create them, to arrest people in the course of conducting one.

A quick Google search for "wrongful arrest welfare check" finds numerous results, including a woman who was arrested when the police entered the wrong address, and a Black woman who was killed when the police officer failed to identify himself.

The unfortunate truth is that anytime a police officer is involved in a situation in the US, it can escalate into a wrongful arrest or worse.

https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/outreach/awareness-...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/19/us/wellness-check-police-shoo...

I'm intimately aware of the service. I don't hold out much hope for mental health engagements that begin forcefully under immediate threat of arrest for not playing along. The anti-social/anti-authority person should only be encouraged to seek moral guidance voluntarily from an authority they trust, some things in a community need to be kept sacred and honest.

Funny, I read the title and immediately thought it was a good thing.

Only after I read your comment did I consider the alternative :)

Why not the actual title (though that title is a little awkward too)

“In the first six months of health care professionals replacing police officers, no one they encountered was arrested”

Whether no arrests is a good thing depends on the crimes.

Only the most ideologically blinded would defend having a social worker team like this respond to car break-ins and the other broad daylight petty theft that has plagued California since they passed that ballot measure awhile back (and a couple other specific cities with similiar legislation).

If using this program as an alternative to police response for drunk and disorderly conduct, teenagers doing teenager things, homeless person trespassing and other "no immediate victim" type crime (which is what it sounds like from TFA) then it's a good thing.

Agreed, the "but" in the bolded text[1] further confuses, but the article highlights some great progress.

>> STAR, has responded to 748 incidents." >> about 3 percent of calls for DPD service, or over 2,500 incidents, were worthy of the alternative approach

[1] "Chief Pazen is thrilled with the success of STAR, but the time and money it saves will go toward fighting crime, he said."

The title is the worst part of the story. It seems tautological that a person will not be arrested when the police hand off that person to people who don't carry out arrests. It'd be a bit like saying that in the first six months of marijuana legalization, there were zero arrests for marijuana possession.

The more interesting (and heartening) aspect is that the police and the white van brigade appear to be working together and helping each other do what they do best, with benefits to the community.

That new title confused me at first... maybe I'm the only one. The actual title of the article is more clear to me.

Actual title: "In the first six months of health care professionals replacing police officers, no one they encountered was arrested"

HN title: "Zero arrests in 6 months of health care professionals replacing police officers"

I’ve wondered this as well, though I suppose many countries use a police force armed with just batons (but combat training I’d assume).

They call the police.

Maybe that is less common than we expect?

How is it different than any situation when somebody turns violent and the police aren't already there? At least in this scenario there are people there who are presumably the most equipped to de-escalate the situation without further violence.

They’re professionals. I think they’re aware that there are risks involved on this job.

The brutal truth is that social services for the dysfunctional elements of society will almost certainly involve more risk than what “regular” people will face. I hope that they’re compensation reflects that additional risk.

That's why most programs like this send both a social worker and police officer. The social worker initially takes the lead but if things escalate past the point that the social worker is able to de-escalate the police are there to intervene.

Ten percent of police calls are about mental illness, but only 2% of attacks on officers occur during responses to incidents involving a person with a mental illness. This role is probably much safer than being a police officer, which is already only the 13th most dangerous job. When an incident occurs, it will almost certainly be used as an excuse to criticize the program when in reality the job is safe compared to many others.

They've been doing this for 30 years in Eugene without issue.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/this-town-of-170000-replac...

> Per self-reported data, CAHOOTS workers responded to 24,000 calls in 2019 -- about 20% of total dispatches. About 150 of those required police backup.

Considering the DPD boss supported this method precisely because he was having police officers wasted at situations that didn't need them, the fact that there were no arrests means perfect specificity on the test for "Should I choose STAR over PD?".

Why would you randomly dispatch them? That would defeat the purpose entirely of this unit.

Which places are those?

It's not really clear what you mean by "information".

It appears whatever you're looking for isn't in the article or any of the charts therein, but can you be more specific? What are you looking for?

Can I take this comment to mean you are a proponent of No Child Left Behind? Because when an organization isn't doing well, clearly the answer is to give them _less_ money.

As someone who works in EMS, I don't understand this concern... Obviously this is not a zero risk activity (welcome to emergency services), but trained professionals are aware of the risk, and have the skills to assess and react as needed (including leaving the area and calling police).

This is not some new problem no one has encountered before. EMS has been dealing with it for decades.

This program has the potential to be major net gain for our society. We have the largest incarcerated population in the world. We have mental health and opioid crises. Our current models of policing are ineffective and inhumane.

I hope that these health professionals become far more widespread and are held in as high regard as firefighters who also risk being seriously injured or worse.

They call the police when shit goes south.

'Many of the psychiatrists involved as practitioners and policy makers in the 1950's and 1960's said in the interviews that heavy responsibility lay on a sometimes neglected aspect of the problem: the overreliance on drugs to do the work of society.

The records show that the politicians were dogged by the image and financial problems posed by the state hospitals and that the scientific and medical establishment sold Congress and the state legislatures a quick fix for a complicated problem that was bought sight unseen.'

> I’m sure it’s more complex than this

For starters, a lot of people have negative productivity. Think of someone intensely anti-social who drags down the productivity of people around them.

You have to understand how the federal government works.

Now that something like this has been implemented and has been successful, it’s likely that it will be adopted more widely, perhaps at the state level. An enterprising congressperson (most likely one of their aides) will notice this opportunity and pick it up as a policy/platform to run on at which point legislation would be introduced that would allocate funds or direct the federal government and/or all states to implement this.

Another way is that a Federal agency gets wind of it and pilots it and then proposes to adopt it more widely.

These programs aren't like that. A van shows up, a medic and someone with experience dealing with mental health issues. They talk to people help them with some basic needs, drive them to a clinic if they need detox (and want to go) or otherwise just get them to stop doing whatever it was that caused someone to call 911.

The STARS people have no authority to cart people off, and are trained to avoid physical confrontation. If people get violent or need to be physically removed, they protect themselves and call the police.

Well hey, if that works and is cheaper, let's do it, right?