Drlee wrote:The problem is that so many on the left side of this argument want to make this about the police or anything other than the violent gun culture we have in this country. I don't know why they are hiding from this.
The Kenosha killer and cause celebre of US conservatives was shooting people at a protest against police brutality.
The same cops that thanked the killer for his work.
The problem is not sending armed police to handle calls that do not require force. The problem is sending untrained cops to do this. I agree with having mental health crisis teams to deal with disturbed people. I work with a great many disturbed people and the inescapable fact is that many of them are violent. I have had this violence directed at me before even though I have been trained to deescalate. Sometimes it is quite appropriate to send the police even when professionals are on the scene. With schizophrenic people, for example, things can go south very quickly indeed.
Again, I invite you to look at the evidence and provide any good reason to not continue and develop these programs that have proven so effective.
Here:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... al-workershttps://www.vice.com/en/article/y3zpqm/ ... thout-gunshttps://www.route-fifty.com/public-safe ... ce/166557/Back during the Reagan administration some well-meaning but uninformed (at best) people, mostly left leaning, became concerned that mental health facilities were warehousing people against their will and without sound medical reason. They prevailed despite the warnings of the medical community and the result was that many mental health facilities were closed and the patients kicked outdoors.
So rather than be compelled to get the medicine that makes their lives bearable, these poor (often) paranoid schizophrenics were left to sleep hungry in their own filth, constantly terrified of everything around them. A truly miserable existence for them and often a danger to the rest of us.
Some of these former patients require interventions that are just too much for mental health workers to handle outside of a controlled environment. Some of them must be subdued. I have had weapons pulled on my by SMI people. So far I have avoided serious injury but that is not always the outcome.
The state of mental health care in the US is appalling. We basically do not have any outside of our individual medical insurance and that usually extremely limits coverage. We have few mental health inpatient facilities and even fewer long term care facilities. And the few we have tend not to be geographically dispersed.
People with mental health issues are 16 times more likely to be killed by police than the rest of us. Studies estimate that between one quarter and one half of all people killed by police have mental health problems.
Police killings and mental health are an intertwined problem in the USA.
https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org ... forcement-So what does this have to do with Rittenhouse? As long as we have a system that is so loose that a 17 year old child can get a firearm and carry it past the police and into a protest, we are going to continue to have these kinds of incidents. There is no doubt in my mind that Rittenhouse was/is mentally ill and that he is just the tip of the iceberg. Homes across America are stuffed with firearms, owned by mostly far right people who think that they need to arm themselves AGAINST the police.
The Kenosha killer is not mentally ill.
He is simply the very rational outcome of a history and culture.
I see POD did not read my post and decided to post a response to a question he prefers to address rather than my point.
@Drlee
Please, clarify your argument and I will address that.