{"id":312388,"date":"2021-07-30T01:48:13","date_gmt":"2021-07-29T22:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/no-social-workers-dont-do-better-than-cops-at-mental-health-response\/"},"modified":"2021-07-30T01:48:13","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T22:48:13","slug":"no-social-workers-dont-do-better-than-cops-at-mental-health-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/no-social-workers-dont-do-better-than-cops-at-mental-health-response\/","title":{"rendered":"#No, social workers don’t do better than cops at mental-health response"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#No, social<\/a> workers don’t do better than cops at mental-health response<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Last month, New York City joined dozens of other cities experimenting with \u201calternatives\u201d to policing by launching the Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division, or B-HEARD, in a pilot study in parts of Harlem. The program dispatches social workers and paramedics to certain mental-health-related 911 calls. Supporters argue that this app<\/a>roach reorients the response to these calls, from public safety toward public health.<\/p>\n

Now the mayor\u2019s office has put out its first report on the program to a glowing, but misleading, reception in the media. <\/p>\n

Outlets such as Business Insider <\/a>and NPR<\/a> highlighted the finding that those approached by B-HEARD responders were more likely to accept help than those approached by police. NBC New York<\/a> identified a causal relationship, claiming that B-HEARD is \u201creducing unnecessary hospitalizations, while increasing the percentage of people who accept help when offered.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first glance, the results look impressive. Just 5 percent of those approached by B-HEARD in its first month refused assistance, compared with 18 percent who received a \u201ctraditional mental-health response\u201d in the same period. And B-HEARD cases were much less likely to be hospitalized.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, a closer look at the data reported by the mayor\u2019s office suggests a deck stacked for B-HEARD\u2019s success. Responders appear to have received calls that were \u2014 perhaps unwittingly \u2014 selected to produce better outcomes.<\/p>\n

\"Officer
Officer Lamont Edwards talks to actor Nathan Purdee during a crisis intervention training class at the NYPD police academy.<\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the mayor\u2019s report notes, the month following B-HEARD\u2019s launch saw roughly 500 mental-health-related calls in the covered area. Of those, roughly a quarter were referred to B-HEARD, which then kicked back a further 1 in 5. In total, the civilian responders considered themselves able to handle just 107 calls, or about 21 percent of the total.<\/p>\n

The calls referred to B-HEARD weren\u2019t a random sample. Responders weren\u2019t routed calls \u201cthat involve a weapon, an imminent risk of violence or where NYPD or EMS call-takers know that an individual has an immediate need for transportation to a medical facility.\u201d B-HEARD responders were also on call for only 16 hours a day; if they took the night off, they would have been spared dealing with mental-health crises among individuals who had declined shelter for the evening.<\/p>\n

Hence an apples-to-apples comparison between B-HEARD and \u201ctraditional\u201d response suffers from selection bias. The difference in outcomes between the two groups owes at least partially, even mostly, to the difference between the pools of calls that each is responsible for handling. <\/p>\n

If the NYPD is called in on more serious and violent calls, the people with whom the police interact will be, on average, less willing to accept help \u2014 regardless of whatever techniques cops use to de-escalate the situation.<\/p>\n

This pattern is common across civilian-led mental-health-response initiatives. CAHOOTS, the original alternative program from Eugene, Ore., is often touted as a model for other cities looking to reduce police activity. But as my recent Manhattan Institute report found<\/a>, CAHOOTS responders cover fewer than 20 percent of 911 calls, with 3 in 4 of those involving routine welfare checks or transporting homeless people.<\/p>\n

\"Instructors
Instructors go over a crisis intervention training lesson at the NYPD Police Academy.<\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Civilian alternatives, in other words, take the easy calls and mostly do a good job. If cities want that, it\u2019s not a bad use of resources \u2014 if anything, it frees up cops\u2019 time to focus on fighting crime. But we should not expect B-HEARD\u2019s high rates of success to persist if it starts picking up more challenging calls.<\/p>\n

The reality is that police do a pretty good job handling mental-health situations, and unarmed civilian alternatives will always be reliant on the police as a backup; B-HEARD sought support in seven of the 107 calls it managed. <\/p>\n

Advocates of defunding police will point to B-HEARD\u2019s success as evidence that we can dramatically curtail policing, but let\u2019s be clear about what the data show: We can trim around the edges, but civilians can\u2019t replace cops.<\/p>\n

Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal, from which this column was adapted.<\/em><\/p>\n

Twitter: @CharlesFLehman<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#No, social workers don’t do better than cops at mental-health response” Last month, New York City joined dozens of other cities experimenting with \u201calternatives\u201d to policing by launching the Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division, or B-HEARD, in a pilot study in parts of Harlem. The program dispatches social workers and paramedics to certain mental-health-related…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":312389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/07\/nydp-covid-vaccine-2.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[113015,72473,5044,12115],"class_list":["post-312388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-7-29-21","tag-homeless","tag-nypd","tag-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}