How Politicians Defunded Mental Health and Left Police Holding the Bag

There's got to be something done to push back against this idea that we have right now, weaponize this idea of defunding the police, that the police are evil. The police having money is the problem. It's crazy. There's a reason why we have the police, folks. They're necessary. It's very important. To abandon them or to treat them like anything other than members of our community and very important members of our community is so short-sighted and so crazy and done by people that I don't think understand psychology, that I don't think they understand violence, I don't think they understand crime. And again, it's weaponized. It's this thing that they're using now to push a political agenda, to align themselves with people so that it helps them get reelected. It helps them gain power with their constituents. It's so dangerous and it's such a weird thing to hear coming out of mainstream politicians' mouths that we need to defund the police. I'm like, you guys are crazy. Yeah. I mean, when people talk about defunding along the lines of take some of that money and put it into communities, that piece of it could be, if done well, beneficial. But why take it from the cops? I don't know that needs necessarily take from the cops, but to really pay more attention to our communities and what they're needing. The police over the last five decades have had to take on more and more and more jobs within the community. I mean, a lot of people would say that the key change came in the 60s when deinstitutionalization happened from the mental hospital. So it used to be if someone was mentally ill, they went to the hospital and they basically stayed there, right? 60s came, deinstitutionalization, all those folks, let's put them out in the community so they can return to their homes. I think there was a lot of it during the regular administration. Right? Let's put money into community mental health. That didn't happen the way it was supposed to. So the community mental health never got funded properly. And then all those folks who had mental illness did not get proper treatment, went off meds, all sorts of problems. Crime rises. And now who has to deal with it? Yeah, chickens have come on the roof. Police officers, right? So they became mental health clinicians, social workers, domestic violence, you know, all that stuff. So if defunding the police means putting money into social services and helping these folks in a way that makes it so that the police officers don't have to do those jobs anymore, I'm all right with that. And I think most of the cops are because I've spent half my career on this side of police psychology stuff training folks how to talk to people with mental illness so they don't end up shooting them. Right? I think there certainly should be cops that are designated to deal with those specific type of situation. People have found amazing ways around it to work on it. We've developed what we call crisis intervention teams. You know, this came out of the 80s in Memphis that, you know, this CIT thing where we have cops and clinicians that go out together. But I don't know any clinician that wants to do that by themselves. So if you defund the police and everyone says, yeah, you know, if it's a domestic violence call, send a therapist out. Jesus Christ. Well, I know because I work with cops that domestic violence calls are one of the most likely to end in violence. Yes. I'm not going there. Right. I might go there if there's an armed person with me and I'll try to, you know, to do, but like as a team, but you're going to send me into a potentially violent and dangerous situation where you've got to go. It's a utopian perspective on a very complicated problem. Yeah, exactly. It's a simple, well, we don't like what we have, so let's get rid of it. And that's, it's far too simplistic. Well, and you've got the evidence right now. And this is a short term study in New York City. Yeah. You know, and I mean, I've got Minneapolis as well. Yep. Folks that I know in New York, some of that training program I talked about earlier, the cops that worked on that who decided, you know what? Retirement is the right thing for me right now. Yeah. And who've left the force because they just were like, I can't do this. This is the lack of support. And what's going on is just too much. It's not worth staying anymore. It's so dangerous. Yeah. It's very unsettling and overwhelming and to see how, rather than, you know, trying to come in and figure out how to improve what we've got. It's like, it just doesn't make sense to throw our hands up and say, okay, get rid of it because what's the plan B? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.