Mental health professionals paired with paramedics will replace cops on some Chicago 911 calls in a first for Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s troubled city.
The Chicago Times reports in one future pilot program, a paramedic will be dispatched alongside a mental health clinician for “behavioral health calls.”
In another, a paramedic will work with a “recovery specialist” on calls involving substance abuse.
The response restructure comes as Chicago Police pension board figures reveal more cops have left the force so far in 2021 than did in the whole of 2018.
In total, 363 officers retired between January and June compared to 339 in 2018, as crime continues to soar across the city.
The number of homicides and shootings in Chicago spiked dramatically in 2020, ending with more bloodshed than in all but one year in more than two decades, as Breitbart News reported.
After three years of falling homicide totals, 2020 ended with 769 homicides — 274 more than the previous year and the most since the 784 homicides in 2016.
Last year ended with 4,033 shooting victims compared with 2,598 the year before.
The Chicago killing fields yield their gruesome daily harvest. https://t.co/BwIr85OgJe
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) June 20, 2021
Would make sense! The city is mostly democrats. We have always said they have mental issues! Once the first one gets shot you won’t have many people applying for that job!
Good. Then they’ll see what cops put up with. And less shit for cops to deal with. Plus some untrained expert is gonna get their ass kicked. Love it. You gonna learn today Lightfoot.
That’s what she needs!
These problems were clearly caused by mayor Loopy Lightbrains giving interviews to white reporters. Now that only blacks can get interviews, the problems won’t go away but if they’re not reported, that’s just as good.
I am a Doctor and a mental health professional, and this is about the worst idea I have ever seen. Social workers and associated mental health workers are not law enforcement.
So as a doctor and mental health professional, are you saying that you or any other mental health professional should not respond to a mental health emergency? If so, then what the he’ll are you and other mental health professionals good for? At what point in any patients care do you become totally useless? When they are just having a bad day and only need to talk to someone, or when they become really agitated and you get to the point where you just say the hell with them, ill call the police and make it their problem?
Go to the emergency room or we can bring the emergency room to you. Please put down your weapon and we’ll talk.
Dear 5:16,
Thank you for your well reasoned and researched response to my comment. As you are clearly an expert in the matter at hand, I’m sure you would agree that 911 calls are typically volatile in nature and require an individual with arrest authority and the proper training to not over or under respond to a situation.
The knee jerk reaction to defund the police and ‘send in the social workers’ will result one catastrophe after another, and this exactly the reason why we have division of labor.
Further, additional burden would be placed on dispatchers to accurately triage which of these calls is “non-violent” based upon a brief telephone conversation. Is a drunk walking around with a bottle of Jack Daniels passive? How about the boyfriend who just called in the overdose of his girlfriend? What about the unidentified panhandler who has an arrest warrant for felony assault?
…But 5:16, you already know all about the above as you have years or experience in the field as both a clinician and a law enforcement officer.
Thank you for you input and have a nice day.
Trust me doc, I probably have more experience in this matter then you do, but unfortunately I don’t have the freedom of speech that you do because of where I got this knowledge and real world experience from, and and therefore have to post anonymous. I also can’t explain my experience due to where I got it. But maybe you can guess where it came from if you are as smart as you think you are. And I don’t necessarily mean to insult you in this comment, and I’m sure if we ever met where we could discuss the matter fully, I could make my point more clearly. But looking at many, many instances where a health care professional turned the matter over to police when it wasn’t necessary, kind of gave me a lack of confidence in the mental health care system. And I agree with you in not defunding the police. But I believe the police are being used to clean up the mess in many circumstances where a mental health professional has failed, and trust me when I say that is from real world experience. And I apologize that I can’t say where this experience came from, but I would guess that since you also do not put your name on your post, you should understand why.
What happens when Loony Lightfoot has her Mental Health Professionals, Recovery Specialist and Paramedics murdered in cold blood because they do not have the experience of handling this drug abuser high on drugs or someone losing it mentally in a domestic with a weapon in their hand????? Asking for trouble with this one!!!
The first few counselors to die will be made martyrs. It won’t be long.
I hope the fist call is to assist Lightfoot herself because we know she is an empty vessel in the brain department. And if it is a situation that the police would have responded to I hope no one answers her call to 911!
The problem with stupid people is that they do not know they are stupid.