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Houston Mayor's Policing Task Force Recap, Part 3: Mental-health first response, What counts as diversion?, the 'all-purpose panacea promoted by people who oppose policy change,' and other stories

Here's Part 3 of Grits' tripartite, annotated analysis of the new report from the Houston Mayor's Task Force on Policing Reform. See Part 1 and Part 2.Mental-Health First ResponseIn Austin, Dallas, and elsewhere across the country, one of the approaches to displacing police from non-law-enforcement tasks has been mental-health first response, where many clients do not ask for a law-enforcement presence and end up in involuntary detention, more often than not, because police don't know what else to do with them. Adding insult to injury, when cops drop them off at the emergency room, they get credit for a "jail diversion"!The Task Force found that "Diversion of mental-health-related 911 calls at the call center level is the earliest point of diversion before any law enforcement involvement...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on October 03, 2020 (boomark / email).