Unarmed emergency responders Nevada Sanchez and Sean Martin take a police dispatch call in southeast Albuquerque, New Mexico, a city with high rates of violent crime and police shootings.
They have no enforcement powers or protective equipment and say they use their voices and brains to deescalate encounters with people in mental health and substance abuse crises.
On some occasions they may have saved lives.
…
Albuquerque, with the second highest rate of police killings among U.S. cities over 250,000 people, according to Mapping Police Violence, has set up one of the country’s most ambitious civilian responder programs to offer help rather than law enforcement to people in crisis.
Such initiatives have spread like “wildfire” across the United States since the 2020 murder of George Floyd highlighted police killings of people of color and those suffering from mental illness or substance abuse, said Alex Vitale, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College.
I like how the answer isn’t “let’s make sure the people with guns are sensible and humane in spicy situations which involve unstable individuals”
Instead it is “let’s send unarmed people into potentially violent situations what’s the worst that could happen”
This is a good thing. You can always call in the police if things get violent. But, police are trained to use their guns in almost any situation, which isn’t what we want when someone is in a mental health crisis. You want someone trained to help them deal with their crisis and come out the other side of it.
I could pull up half a dozen articles right now of police officers shooting people in mental health crisis situations who just wanted help. That’s not what we want.
Hm… I was all set to disagree with you but it kind of looks like you’re right – it looks to me like the track record is that it works actually really well.
This is one of the things I really like about Lemmy; people having thoughtful discussions and changing their point of view with the evidence. So, kudos to you!
LoL, was going to comment this is the first time I’ve seen this happen on Lemmy and it’s refreshing af. Nice to see this person learned something today, hopefully they share this knowledge with others.
