NYC pilot tries mental health responders in place of police
I am all for the pilot program so long as the politicians pushing for this are charged as accessories to any crimes committed against the people they are going to put at risk.<p>This is the very definition of insanity.  In other words, ignoring reality and pretending that a fantasy in someone’s head is real.<p>My father in law is a retired cop.  One of the most harrowing stories he tells is about when he and his partner entered this four unit apartment building.  The kind where you open the front door and there are four doors along a short hallway.<p>The call was for yelling and screaming (a loud argument) from one of the units at 2:00 AM.<p>They opened the front door (unlocked) and stepped into the hallway to look for the apartment.<p>That’s when someone comes out of one of the apartments and immediately fires a gun towards them, emptying the entire clip.<p>His partner got shot twice.  He was grazed once.<p>The guy ran off.  Other cops arrested him later.<p>The vast majority of people are good.  We don’t have cops to hand lollipops to kids playing at the park.  We send armed cops into the worst possible situations and expect them to be buddhist philosophers.  Sorry, that’s not the real world.  Not when your job requires you to engage with multiple people a day, any one of whom could kill you.<p>Those of you who think you can philosophize with someone intent on killing you should take a weapons martial arts class to understand reality.  Having done so myself for decades I can tell you I don’t want anyone with a knife any closer than 16 feet, maybe 20.  Even someone relatively slow and without training can bridge a 20 foot gap and kill you with a knife before you know what happened.<p>People (and politicians) love to voice opinions about this stuff and yet none of them are willing to put their lives on the line as part of the experiment they propose.  I’ll have respect for them when, armed with a candy bar and good intentions, they go face someone who could potentially kill them. We’ll see how long their plans survive contact with reality.