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.
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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.
The personality types needed for each role are extremely different. Not to mention, the whole culture of police is that THEY are the ONLY thin blue line, keeping back the horrors that await you if you dare to walk outside your house. The answer is to start over from scratch from a place that doesn’t favor the land owners and is considerate of society.
The personality types attracted to each role, mind you. Cops become cops because they like the feeling of having power over people, and tend to behave that way on the job. Social workers enter the field because they want to help others, which is why when somebody is in crisis, you should want to send a social worker rather than an emotionally-stunted high school bully who’s armed to the teeth and trained to see deadly threats in every shadow.
Arguably you need somebody else to fill the role of police as well, but if you tried to do that the current demographic of officers would probably become something like an outlaw biker gang overnight, so it’s hard to see how we get there from here.
I would say the types who stay in each role.
Lots of people want to be cops because they still have the ideal of the Andy Taylor community police officer. But they don’t last because of the bad cops.
Social workers also enter the field because they want to help people. But giving of yourself mentally and emotionally takes a toll, and the people that do it for a long time become hardened.
I understood. And I am that jerk. Andy Griffith. And generally, the saying is “Mayberry” usually which is the town he policed. But you had me on Google making sure the guitarist from Duran Duran wasn’t up to no good :D
Andy Griffith is the actor. Andy Taylor is the character.
Well shit. How confusing when the show is called the Andy Griffith show. Who is the asshole…this guy! :D