Many many things. Dealing with unsheltered, dealing with drug users, dealing with people having health or mental health emergencies. Various forms of traffic accidents.
Replies
And probably a good number of disputes and civil interactions besides.
aug 31, 2025, 8:17 pm • 1 0 • view
I’m not even sure this is in dispute as it’s essentially one of the most common critiques of the use of cops there is.
aug 31, 2025, 8:17 pm • 1 0 • view
It may be common, but it's misdirected. Nobody has ever actually explained who is supposed to do these things, other than "cops but with no guns," and I see no evidence that there are people lining up to take jobs as unarmed cops.
aug 31, 2025, 8:23 pm • 2 0 • view
Cities tend not to function well this way. And there’s every piece of evidence that it’s not necessary. Shit. In the UK. The vast majority of cops aren’t armed.
aug 31, 2025, 8:25 pm • 1 0 • view
OK but that just goes back to their original point re: the prevalence of guns in the US.
aug 31, 2025, 8:42 pm • 3 0 • view
Uh. Ok.
aug 31, 2025, 8:45 pm • 0 0 • view
Most traffic enforcement should be done by cameras I don’t love the surveillance state vibes of that but I like armed cops patrolling roadways even less
aug 31, 2025, 9:29 pm • 3 0 • view
I think the issue is, what do you do about people actively threatening public safety by their driving? Issuing a camera ticket to someone doing 35 in a 30 is fine, but someone doing 95 in a 45 needs to go to jail.
aug 31, 2025, 9:33 pm • 2 0 • view
Yeah you have someone arrest them At that point it’s pretty clear someone has to arrest them and the sort of person who does that might be violent, so cops Ideally they’d be doing that though rather than more minor things
aug 31, 2025, 9:37 pm • 2 0 • view
Yeah, precisely, I just think the idea that that means "we can get rid of cops" is silly. We aren't going to need fewer traffic cops just because most enforcement is put on cameras. Most cops aren't traffic cops to begin with.
aug 31, 2025, 9:40 pm • 2 0 • view
There are 392 state police highway patrol officers in all of Nevada. My entire county only has one.
aug 31, 2025, 9:41 pm • 1 0 • view
In the long run the solution is probably computer-enforced speed limits. Which is even more "big brother" but I have to admit the idea has merits.
aug 31, 2025, 9:34 pm • 3 0 • view
Anecdotally I hear first responders in many of those instances do end up just calling the cops the second it seems like there’s a possibility the person is physically dangerous
aug 31, 2025, 8:31 pm • 7 0 • view
And is this in every instance? There just seems to be a complete denial about the nature of these interactions. I pass homeless people every day. I have somehow managed to survive until his day without even a sour word. I’ve been in a traffic accident (luckily only two) but I somehow managed to
aug 31, 2025, 8:38 pm • 1 0 • view
Survive without waving a gun in face of the person driving the other car.
aug 31, 2025, 8:38 pm • 1 0 • view
if someone presents a possible threat of physical danger, yes. Like by all means, wherever we can, let’s get first responders best equipped for the problem at hand to respond, and that’s not always cops. But also I don’t expect social workers to physically restrain people who get dangerous.
aug 31, 2025, 8:48 pm • 3 0 • view
I’m not sure anyone proposed this. I asked very clearly why this is being treated as all or nothing. The other side seems to be agreeing but then saying we have to be armed for every public encounter.
aug 31, 2025, 8:54 pm • 1 0 • view
I don’t even know what to do with the idea that all police responses are assumed to include law-breaking.
aug 31, 2025, 8:55 pm • 1 0 • view
I also wouldn’t expect social workers to clear encampments in public spaces of all the people who specifically refused housing assistance. You actually do need cops for that.
aug 31, 2025, 8:53 pm • 1 0 • view
There is no one in the threads that I am included in that says there is never a need for cops or armed cops. That’s just a complete strawman. The argument WAS made that you couldn’t have unarmed people doing anything related to what cops do. Because no one would ever take the job.
aug 31, 2025, 9:00 pm • 0 0 • view
I really don’t know how much you could safely shift the balance of responses right now; I am willing to give it a shot but I don’t trust the loudest advocates to do it with the care and deliberation I think making those changes requires.
aug 31, 2025, 9:04 pm • 3 0 • view
This seems a very reasonable opinion.
aug 31, 2025, 9:05 pm • 1 0 • view
The nature of the interaction of a call for police service is inherently adversarial, because the assertion is that some law has been broken.
aug 31, 2025, 8:41 pm • 3 0 • view
Which is a problem! Homelessness shouldn't be criminalized. That's the problem, not that people who are showing up to deal with criminal law are armed.
aug 31, 2025, 8:44 pm • 1 0 • view
Ok. That seems to be precisely the point that I was making.
aug 31, 2025, 8:46 pm • 1 0 • view
Yep. The reality is that my life safety comes first. If nothing else, for the practical reason that if I get hurt, I'm now part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
aug 31, 2025, 8:35 pm • 3 0 • view
The difference is that they are not "dealing with" these situations from a law enforcement perspective. The merit of non-law enforcement interventions does not contradict the point that enforcing the law against a heavily armed populace is very fraught.
sep 1, 2025, 3:28 am • 1 0 • view
Probably good that I didn’t make that argument then.
sep 1, 2025, 3:29 am • 1 0 • view
You did, though. You brought up social workers as evidence that there is a broad willingness to do unarmed law enforcement work in the US.
sep 1, 2025, 3:31 am • 1 0 • view
I never claimed they were or should be doing law enforcement work. The exact opposite. I have to believe you understand fully well what I was saying as it is a pretty commonly held and a waiver view as well as described in detail further in the threads. And one that both the OP and others
sep 1, 2025, 3:35 am • 0 0 • view
Basically all agree with except for some weird semantic or circular discussion point people want to pretend to have.
sep 1, 2025, 3:36 am • 0 0 • view
I know that. I'm just saying you're fundamentally missing the original point about people's unwillingness to do *law enforcement work* in the US while unarmed. If you want to say that social workers should be called before cops in many situations, that's fine, but it's a separate argument.
sep 1, 2025, 3:41 am • 1 0 • view
You're arguing "if social workers can deal with these situations without guns, why can't cops", and I'm pointing out that they're not dealing with the situations in the same way at all, so the risks (real and perceived) are not the same.
sep 1, 2025, 3:33 am • 2 0 • view
I’m absolutely not arguing this and didn’t say I was. Take your bad faith elsewhere.
sep 1, 2025, 3:36 am • 1 0 • view
bsky.app/profile/bana...
sep 1, 2025, 3:43 am • 1 0 • view
This is precisely what I said. You’re choosing to nitpick in order to have an argument. I don’t tolerate that shit here. The moose outside Bluesky should have told you.
sep 1, 2025, 3:46 am • 0 0 • view
Like I have to ask in some seriousness. Why? Why would you do this? What’s in it for you? Why are you choosing this path?
sep 1, 2025, 3:46 am • 0 0 • view
I don't think this is a minor nitpick, it goes right to the core of what you're saying. I think we were having a civil discussion just now with both sides politely disagreeing with the other. I'm not sure why you've suddenly snapped.
sep 1, 2025, 3:56 am • 1 0 • view
Because I went through the same silliness with the first guy to find out we basically agree. You re inventing a thing I didn’t say to argue with. That’s a really odd thing to do. What possible discussion are you hoping to have? There’s nothing else I can say. For the third time I’m not saying
sep 1, 2025, 3:59 am • 0 0 • view
Or claiming the thing you say I am. Do you want me to agree? It wasn’t even your convo? You jumped in here 5 hours later to argue with a strawman you’ve invented? You were hoping for charity? Civility? A pat on the head?
sep 1, 2025, 4:00 am • 0 0 • view
Any of those situations could involve people with firearms and the willingness to use them to avoid consequences for their actions. As a volunteer EMT, we are specifically trained *not* to engage in situations where our safety could be compromised, until police have secured the scene.
aug 31, 2025, 8:20 pm • 15 0 • view
So the vision of America is that since every single solitary interaction could include people with firearms no one should ever engage with anyone in public until all the participants have been violently detained, handcuffed and are sitting in jail. That’s pretty dark.
aug 31, 2025, 8:22 pm • 2 0 • view
No, but if I'm called to a report of someone having a mental health crisis, I'm certainly not going to engage with that person until I have police on scene, because the reality is that lots of people with mental health problems have guns here!
aug 31, 2025, 8:25 pm • 4 0 • view
Sounds like you’ve identified the problem quite well.
aug 31, 2025, 8:25 pm • 0 0 • view
The problem is not the people, it's the fucking guns, and until we recognize that the Second Amendment is an obsolete relic which needs to be written out of the Constitution just as the three-fifths compromise was, we're all just pointlessly tinkering at the edges of the problem.
aug 31, 2025, 8:26 pm • 7 0 • view
You’ll get no argument from me. I’d be rid of the 2A and almost all guns in a hot second if I had the chance. You’d still be doing the wrong thing by relying on police to do what it does, at least in the north-eastern cities I’ve lived in.
aug 31, 2025, 8:27 pm • 5 0 • view
This true but 2% or so of police interactions involve a subject with a firearm. This is probably lower than 7/11 clerks in Texas. It’s just not reasonable concern- or- if it is, then a much larger portion of service workers should be armed.
aug 31, 2025, 8:42 pm • 1 0 • view
This is M&M analogy territory, though. A 1-in-50 chance that the person I'm about to engage with in an adversarial manner has at his instant disposal a device that could easily kill me is enough to make any reasonable person want an equally-powerful means of self-defense equally easily at hand.
aug 31, 2025, 8:51 pm • 3 0 • view
I wouldn't get on an airplane if there were a 1-in-50 chance it was going to crash into the side of a mountain. If it's your job then let's say you engage in one of these interactions that has a 1-in-50 chance of going bad every day. 200 working days in a year, .98^200 = 0.018
aug 31, 2025, 8:51 pm • 3 0 • view
So that 2% chance of any given interaction means that, even with this (very conservative) estimate, there's a 98.2% chance you'll encounter at least one of these 1-in-50 interactions in a given year. I'm not taking those odds.
aug 31, 2025, 8:51 pm • 2 0 • view
This all insane. My mistake. I should have backed out of this right at the beginning.
aug 31, 2025, 8:57 pm • 0 0 • view
Well, “interaction” just means the person detained had a gun- not that they’re going to use it- the probability of the interaction going violent is way lower. But I thought this was the whole point of police hero worship, so yea I mean if you’re a coward you probably shouldn’t do public safety work
aug 31, 2025, 9:06 pm • 1 0 • view
Furthermore, you take those odds every time you get into a car- which has a very high likelihood of crashing
aug 31, 2025, 9:07 pm • 0 0 • view
Well, no, you're not taking *those* odds. 2% of automobile trips do not end in a fatality. It's a substantially higher rate than commercial aviation, yes, but it's not *that* high. It's several orders of magnitude lower, in fact.
aug 31, 2025, 9:14 pm • 1 0 • view
Yes, you take that chance when you're a cop, and with that, you receive the ability to respond with lethal force yourself. You don't just sign up to be target practice.
aug 31, 2025, 9:09 pm • 2 0 • view
That's why I am not going to engage in any scene involving criminal activity until police have secured it - I'm an EMT, not a human shield.
aug 31, 2025, 9:10 pm • 2 0 • view
But yes this is why Uvalde was such a scandal and should have led to mass firings - police *are* purportedly the ones trained and equipped to do that, and they refused and sat around like cowards.
aug 31, 2025, 10:02 pm • 3 0 • view
The key difference is that the social workers are *calling in backup*, so there’s a layer between the cops getting involved and more scope to scale back armed patrols
aug 31, 2025, 8:36 pm • 13 0 • view
Like having some non-cop third party in a position to say “does this require people with guns” is still a net good.
aug 31, 2025, 8:37 pm • 16 0 • view
I can’t even actually believe someone would dispute this.
aug 31, 2025, 8:39 pm • 5 0 • view