Police should not be doing Wellness Checks, or any sort of interaction with Mental Health

For a concrete example of how to move towards a safer city, I strongly believe that we should reduce the amount we spend directly on the police and redirect that to public safety, and an excellent first step would be to immediately stop sending police on Wellness Checks (send paramedics for the time being, until we have set up and hired a specific team of trained mental health and community service professionals specializing in non-violent de-escalation), and to stop sending police on checks relating to mental health at all. The CAHOOTS program from Eugene Oregon would be an excellent example of what to model (also noteworthy that that program saves that city millions annually), as we move away from a reactionary and force-first safety model and towards a proactive, informed and well-funded safety model.

Anyone paying attention to the news should already see the horrific body cost of sending police on wellness checks, as merely in the last three months we in Canada have seen multiple cases of what on the best interpretation is an appalling mismanagement of a mental health situation that ends in death, and on the more grim interpretation is just straight-up causing the death of vulnerable people, (Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Chantal Moore, D'Andre Campbell, Ejaz Choudry). But even in cases that don't end in death we have new evidence that the police are using force when it is not appropriate or helpful (as in the case of Mona Wang). We desperately need to find a better way and I'm excited at the prospect that we can move towards a safer city where everyone gets the care they need.