By Andrew Hay

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.

  • protistEnglish
    34·
    9 months ago

    I’ve participated in mental health crisis responses as a mental health professional, and I can tell you if there are reports of violence, weapons, or anything pointing toward physical danger, the police will lead or co-respond on the call. Similarly, we know how to gauge risk, IMO better than the police do. We will not engage or will disengage if we sense potential risk to anyone’s physical safety and will call for police backup. When working with the public, you can never eliminate all risk, but there are already a ton of crisis social workers and paramedics out there doing this.

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
      135·
      9 months ago

      if there are reports of violence, weapons, or anything pointing toward physical danger, the police will lead or co-respond on the call.

      OOOOHH

      That actually makes total sense; I guess that was the missing piece that I wasn’t envisioning when I was talking about how it doesn’t make sense.

      As a general rule I don’t at all agree with the ACAB or “we have to punish the police now” mentality, but sending mental health professionals to these calls if you’re going to also have police in the subset of situations where they make sense actually sounds like a great step forward. Thanks for the insight.

      • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
        121·
        9 months ago

        Guess it helps if you read the article and get all the facts before reacting…

        I think if more people did that we’d have fewer republicans.