Yeah, it’s not about minimizing the danger officers face. I posed these issues to a prosecutor friend of mine back in 2020. He’s much more conservative than I am. I have the same inclinations you do.Appreciate your engagement on this. Every interaction a city has with a citizen is unique and presents different dangers and different opportunities. The movement that I've seen hasn't been to take money away from police and send social workers out to deal with potentially violent situations. I think part of the problem is that we've somehow misidentified that every interaction is a highly dangerous situation.
I fully appreciate the danger that police officers face every day, so please don't misconstrue this as minimizing the dangers that they face. The challenge is trying to figure out how to evaluate those interactions appropriately and as human individuals. It's not easy, but it's a challenge worth undertaking.
He said the problem is, at the time of the incident, when it’s called in by whoever it is, the civilians aren’t reliable judges of the potential danger and since the call can be coming from anywhere, it’s not practical to train them. So that challenge might just be unsolvable. Sucks, but makes sense to me.