What's being proposed is taking people off the streets against their will because a cop says they appear mentally unstable. And some people probably support it because those people make them uncomfortable when they see them, and we cant have people being made uncomfortable by the messed up outcomes this country's policies produce. If a conservative politician proposed this you'd likely be horrified and call him an authoritarian.
Even if you were to take the best faith notion that they are being detained to "help" them with their mental illness, do you think a system that operates on profit and is always concerned about costs is equipped to actually help people that cant pay a dime?
This is such a tricky problem. Mentally ill people often aren’t capable of making the decision that could get them healthy.
Yes it is a tricky problem. As is providing medical services to people unable to pay in a system that demands payment for medical services. The idea that this will amount to anything other than disappearing undesirable people into some kind of blackhole seems unlikely to me.
Sorry, but it doesn't seem like a tricky problem to me. If a person is a threat to themselves or others, they get the decision taken from them. If they're not, they are adults and are allowed to make what we consider bad choices. That's part of living in a free country. The government doesn't get to arrest and detain people because it feels they're an eyesore or a nuisance. If we really want to get serious about helping mentally ill people, there are a lot of evidence-based steps we can take to provide them healthcare, housing, resources, etc. But we don't want to spend the money to do that. So no, I'm not going to ever support the government having the power to arrest and detain people simply because they're accused of being mentally ill.
My town, DeLand, can be a bit liberal with Stetson University being in the center of town. They always are proposing and willing to fund a homeless shelter. The issue is they want to put it halfway between Daytona beach and DeLand. Basically where no one lives and right next to the county jail. There is a game of ping pong with the homeless who bus them to Florida in the winter and then Daytona busses back up north when the weather warms up. During bike week Daytona busses then to DeLand. No easy or cheap answers here.
I think the answers are pretty easy and straightforward to homelessness and medical care, its to provide those things universally and guarantee them. The countries that do that dont have homelessness or mental health problems to the scale that we do. The difficult part is all the vested interests and an economic/political system that prevent that from coming to be. Mostly we have a system that at best simply wants to do elaborate or insane things to hide the problems when they become inconvenient, typically that means criminalizing things and letting the cops deal with it.
Thanks for proving my point. The reason to do it is not because it makes people uncomfortable, but because it is inhumane to leave people unsheltered who do not have the ability to take care of themselves. While there would have to be training and clear protocols I don’t think it is beyond a cops ability to make a preliminary assessment and bring somebody in to be evaluated. While I understand there is potential for abuse, leaving them out on the streets is also a form of abuse. The idea is to get them help. Id prefer to have a social worker there or consulted but it may not be practical. If one couldn’t be there perhaps they could be video’d in.
They aren’t providing housing, they want to put them in a defacto jail against their will that they can’t leave. And do you seriously think they are going to provide the resources to help these people? It’s all about out of sight, out of mind.
Except these people do have the ability to take care of themselves. The ones who are a danger to themselves are already eligible for involuntary commitment. This is all about making homeless people go away, not about helping them. And cops are already notoriously terrible at dealing with mentally ill people. This is a disaster waiting to happen. No, it's not. It's about policing choices you disagree with. Provide them options. Don't seek to strip them of their freedoms.
Places like Las Vegas got into trouble for engaging in "greyhound therapy" i.e. buying one way bus tickets to get them the hell out of town with zero arrangements for what to connect to when they arrived at the some other place.
It is light years beyond the comprehension of almost every police officer unless they spent 8 years + getting a medical degree with a psychiatric specialty. The fact that this does not terrify every single person is not shocking, but is truly sad. The mayor is basically empowering police officers to become judge, jury and executioner, the Constitution be damned and people are applauding it.
I must have read something different. I don’t see discussion of being arrested, being charged, being put on trial, etc. Executioner? FFS.
I can't possibly imagine laws like this mutating into rounding up everybody who spreads "disinformation."
