I found this while working on my post below: NASW Statement on Ferguson Grand Jury Decision. Through my years working in behavioral health, I worked with a lot of Social Workers, as co-workers and as a client. As a group, Social Workers are very hard working. They want to help others. They are also frustrated, bound by constraints of the agency they work for, and the times when the services they offer do not fit with the needs their clients have. So when the "national organization" says things like this, it is disheartening:
NASW supports reforms that could prevent unnecessary police shootings from occurring. These include:
- National standards on the use of lethal police force.
- National standards on how police handle persons living with mental illnesses or disabilities.
- Training to help end police bias and racial profiling when dealing with people of color.
- Making body cameras standard police equipment.
First of all, I support body cameras on officers. It documents when they did things right, as well as when they do things wrong. Body cameras are an impassioned, neutral witness to events whose story does not change as time goes on. Second, "national standards" doesn't work. It sounds good, however remember we are a patchwork of 50 States, each with its own identity. What works in California probably won't work in Arkansas, and vice versa. Also, you would have to write out every possible instance and the appropriate reaction for that case.
Of course, none of the people who will write this "standard" will have ever been in a gunfight or any type of fight for their lives, thus having no idea what they are talking about. The result will be unreasonable standards of conduct, parsed to the point where even the tiniest mistake (Remember Ed, whose misplaced comma cost his firm $1.6 Million?) will leave the officer dead or in jail for the rest of his life.
"National Standards" probably won't work in dealing with "mental health calls" too much either. See above. Unless you want to apply something that supersedes the law, human kindness. People with mental health issues are not operating under the same set of facts that everyone else does. The result is, they will act differently. I know this, because I've been on that end of a "police encounter." The Crisis Intervention Team concept was developed here in Memphis, Tennessee. It teaches the officers to talk with, not command a person who is scared, disoriented and who sees and hears things no one else does.
I remember one time a man who was severely affected by paranoid schizophrenia. We were in a "Psychiatric Evaluation Ward" and he was curled up on the ground shouting, "Help me! The voices are telling me to kill!" Despite all that, the officer still has to protect himself and others. Here in Memphis, not every mental health call is successfully resolved, but the vast majority are.
Last point: I personally, just me, think that the laws should be as few as possible. With all of the laws, rules and regulations on the books, our physical, emotional, social, economic and other freedoms are extremely restricted by the government. That being said, the law must be color-blind. And I know in Ferguson it is not. Race should never be a factor for the police to stop or investigate a citizen for anything. If 79% of any group (be it by skin color, religion, sexual orientation or any other description you wish to use) breaks a law, it is no reason to detain without provocation any person of that group, because you just might grab one of the 21%.