Highlights
Social workers are so backlogged that it can take a week or more to respond to urgent 911 calls.
Police reform may have support but making people’s lives demonstrably worse seems cruel and regressive.
Author
Opinion
I wrote articles supporting social workers responding to 911 calls. I believe that cops can’t be all things to all people.
The pushback from the law enforcement community was immense. They thought I was suggesting that the funds should come from their budgets, which was impossible if cities were going to do it right.
Cops believed it wouldn’t be done correctly and that the public would be at greater risk.
Many believed that cities and states would do it on the cheap without attention to detail. They were right, at least in this instance.
Crisis Responders Are So Backlogged That It Can Take A Week To Respond
CrossCut is a Pacific Northwest media organization. They offered an article on the implementation of a social worker program created to respond to non-emergency 911 calls in King County.
King County is the most populous jurisdiction in the state of Washington, and the 12th-most populous in the United States. The county seat is Seattle, also the state’s most populous city, Wikipedia.
From their reporting: (paragraphs shortened or rearranged for brevity)
Since the law took effect in August, many service providers are reporting a breakdown in managing people in severe crisis.
What was an already shaky response system has begun to crumble, they say, as law enforcement has pulled back from engaging.
In Seattle, police in August committed 45% fewer people to the hospital than was the norm during the previous four years — a trend that’s continuing into September, according to publicly available data from the police department.
Now, providers are ringing alarm bells. More than 20 King County service providers recently called for an “emergency summit” with city and county leaders, seeking clarity on what instructions those in law enforcement are receiving from police leadership, a legal analysis on the implications of the new state law and a plan for creating more alternatives to police.
“Our community’s ability to adequately respond to behavioral health crisis events is itself in crisis…..” “Without urgent action, people living with behavioral health conditions, the staff and organizations who care for them, and the community at large are at serious risk,” the letter continues.
People with two kinds of jobs are authorized to detain someone to bring that person to the hospital: designated crisis responders and the police.
Designated crisis responders, however, are so backlogged that it can often take them a week or more to respond. Historically, that delay has left the police as service providers’ only backup option, for better or worse.
“It’s just a tragedy to not be able to get someone the treatment that they need,” said Don Clayton, clinical director with Catholic Community Services. “That’s so hard to see.”
Not The Only Problem In Seattle-Cops Leaving-News Week
Over 200 officers have left the Seattle Police Department since the 2020 summer protests, including Carmen Best, the city’s first Black police chief.
Officers have quit in protest of calls to “defund” the police, which includes cutting salaries and cutting jobs for as many as 100 police officers. Interim police Chief Adrian Diaz said the department’s reduced numbers have led to a “staffing crisis,” News Week.
More Problems With Replacing Law Enforcement-Minneapolis-Associated Press (rearranged quotes for brevity)
As activists mobilized this summer to ask Minneapolis voters to replace their police department, one of the first prominent Democrats to slam the plan was a moderate congresswoman who doesn’t even live in the city.
Angie Craig declared it “shortsighted, misguided and likely to harm the very communities that it seeks to protect.” She warned that it could push out the city’s popular Black police chief.
As a city that has become synonymous with police abuse wrestles with police reform, the effort is sharply dividing Democrats along ideological lines. The state’s best known progressives — U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar and Attorney General Keith Ellison — support the plan, which would replace the police department with a new Department of Public Safety. Other top Democrats, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Gov. Tim Walz, oppose it, Associated Press.
So far this year, Minneapolis has recorded more than 500 gunshot wounds — roughly double the four-year average prior to 2020, Minnesota Reformer.
Replacing cops with social workers for non-emergency 911 calls is part of the plan.
Conclusions
Bureaucracies are pounded with criticisms but the funny thing about them is that they work.
Yep, their cumbersome and lack innovation. But complex social issues can only be addressed by rules, training, continuous funding sources, sufficient staff, and procedures.
Don’t want cops to respond to emergency social work calls? Then create and fund the bureaucracy (without dipping into police funs) that makes it work or you get a self-created “behavioral health crisis.”
The same will happen to Minneapolis and other cities as they contemplate “alternatives” to policing.
There are endless quotes on change management, “If you want to make enemies, try to change something,”–Woodrow Wilson.
But change cannot be done on the cheap. It has to be well thought out and supported or you get the current wave of explosive violent crime and crisis patients who need help with no one coming.
Police reform may be supported per Gallup, but making people’s lives demonstrably worse seems cruel and regressive to me.
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Most Dangerous Cities/States/Countries at Most Dangerous Cities.
US Crime Rates at Nationwide Crime Rates.
National Offender Recidivism Rates at Offender Recidivism.
An Overview Of Data On Mental Health at Mental Health And Crime.
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