Changes in Police Response
As police departments struggle to keep staffing due to several factors, as a profession, departments must rethink how the police will respond to complaints and calls for service. The old way off policing cannot continue to respond on all the calls they have over the years.
To provide a timely response for in-progress, serious crimes, we must shift calls for service which are not police calls and can better handled by other agencies. Some jurisdictions have addressed “check well-being” of individuals and reassigned to fire and EMS as they have the resources and personnel to handle the situation once they arrive. This opposed to police who are only trained for basic first aid and CPR.
Agencies are also looking at how they deal with individuals who are suffering from mental health and alcohol or drug addiction by shifting away from the responsibility of the police, unless the individual is an imminent threat to others. The response for these individuals needs to be by those that are trained specifically in these issues. Police are broadly trained in dealing with mental health crisis, but it would better serve the public and individual to have a critical action team made up of mental health professionals and EMS as they are better suited to respond to these types of situations that are not criminal in nature.
Just a few changes in response will better serve the public, provide a better continuum of care for individuals and allow police officers to focus on criminal activity.
