[Hungames]

When I started in 2004, if I met a person in crisis, a person with suicidal ideations, a person with a mental illness (diagnosed or not), I could at my discretion or their request drive them to the state mental hospital in downtown Phoenix.  I would pull up to the front door and drop them off.  The problem was dealt with by trained social service employees and medical clinicians. Transients could be directed to one of several shelters to receive food, a bed, supplies, or aid.  But resources slowly, and quietly began getting shut down.  It actually took me almost a year to realize that the state mental hospital didn't exist any more.  Not only could it no longer be used as a resource for me....but the occupants that were housed there were released and trickled out on to the streets.

Instead of defunding the police.  Stop overburdening them.

Support crisis intervention teams from your local hospital that are available 24 hours a day to respond out to calls for help. Understand that some programs like that currently exist. Most are underfunded, available intermittently, and almost all require officers to be dispatched with them.  If there are no police, they will not go either.  Police Officers receive (an anecdotal guess) 2 to 8 hours of crisis training per year, unless an individual officer elects or is directed to attend a 1 week class.  Still no where near what a social worker does.  Don't make police officers responsible for dealing with your community's mentally ill.

Support homeless shelters, low income housing, multi family housing units, and other resources in your community.  High housing costs, population density, unemployment, and the aforementioned mental health issues are causing an increase in homelessness and transients.  Officers receive (an anecdotal guess) 0 hours per year training specifically on homeless issues.  Some officers may seek out training or resources personally, as a matter of interested.  Don't make police officers responsible for dealing with your community's homeless population.

This exactly.

I have only been working as a volunteer EMT for a number of months now, but I have learned a lot about the problems with police and EMS. One call I had was a homeless guy. Since there are very few if any shelters in my area, the homeless walk the streets at night. One guy often walks on a main road into traffic to force the police to come. The cops arrive, call us, and we transport him to the local hospital. He gets a free meal and leaves and starts wandering the streets to repeat the cycle. 

Additionally, in terms of overburdening the police, medical calls in small towns are usually answered first by police. In the towns I serve, the cops all carry medical bags with basic medical equipment, defib, and an O2 tank I believe. In small towns this is alright. The cops are usually doing nothing but traffic stops anyways so they just hang around and talk while we work. When we need them, they help with lifting and moving heavier patients. However, in larger towns and cities, this is not possible. The cops have their jobs to do and they can't be the ones responding to medical calls. There are obviously times when calls can get dangerous, but we can pack up and leave and call the cops if needed. 

People do not understand when to call 911 and when not to. There was never a class teaching about it. Obviously, you don't want to discourage people from calling 911 when it is necessary, but a class would help. 

I understand the push to have social workers (or full-time crisis intervention teams) respond to people in crisis, but there is the obvious danger that some people in crisis are violent. There are suicides-by-cop and I wouldn't be surprised if some extremely desperate people were violent towards the social workers to force the cops to come. Luckily, this is usually the exception to the rule and most people in crisis just need help. There are very few resources available normally and cops are not trained to handle them. It's definitely something to explore.

[Markus]

I can support the idea to improve the lives of Black People who are disadvantaged due to economic issues. I can't however support Black Lives Matter, the organisation established in 2013 - As its abundantly clear they are an anti-policing campaign. If they were a meaningful campaign, they'd at least spent the last 7 years writing up policy that can be discussed and potentially implemented. But they haven't. 

Instead, they've been honouring and protesting the deaths of criminals and running smear campaigns. I've done very thorough investigations in the last 24 hours, backed by the last 7 years of me following policing in the U.S.( I wont deny my bias, I'm on the side of the police)

I've found multiple instances were BLM protested deaths, but never bothered to investigate them. Such as the death of a Black Mother, who had her son hostage and fired a shotgun at police after a 6 hour stand off. 

They've also tried cutting funding from Police and Fire department training. Such was the case in Chicago a few years back, the City had pledged to put money into a new training grounds, which offered newer up to date facilities for both the Police Department and Fire Department. 

I also spent a good few hours on blacklivesmatter.com. They offer absolutely nothing to the convocation that needs to be had. 

So what do I think that needs to be done? Well I actually don't know. Its clear to me that black people are dying, because of crime. And this crime is caused by complex economic disparity, in communities not in race. 

Where we find large amounts of crime in black populations, we find large amounts of crime in the whites and Hispanics population. Lets take a good example; Detroit.

From what I understand - Detroit wasn't always the violent mess it is today, however it became rampant with crime after the

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automotive industry declined there? I would love to have any input from anyone that knows more about this. 

From what I can deter this lead to a huge economic impacts which means that now 35% of people living in Detroit are below the poverty line. 

So to anyone here who is n full support of either BLM, Defund the Police etc. I pose two questions, because I want to eliminate bias yet no one wants to talk. So I can't get anyone else's perspective. 

Is this really a racial issue? Or is it an economic issue?

If its an economic issue, what do we do to resolve it?

The reason no one wants to talk is because threads like these will lead to nothing other than people arguing with eachother anyway.

People in here, in the end, are not going to do anything or take any action. This all leads to nowhere.

Edit: Personally, the only point I can agree with is stopping the overburdening of police and the one about tax-exempt organizations such as The Church of Scientology.