Not a Joke: Los Angeles Actually Votes To Form 'Unarmed Response' Teams To Answer 911 Calls
The Los Angeles City Council has unanimously voted to created a pilot program to send “unarmed response” teams to nonviolent calls which are currently handled by the city’s police department.
Every election we see a majority of voters in California cast ballots against their own interests, but its fascinating to watch elected Democrats not only vote for something with an obvious flaw, but to celebrate doing so.
The decision to explore keeping police officers away from some calls by the Democratic-run council was made this past week and hailed by the council’s president, Nury Martinez, according to KTTV.
Martinez said of the decision in a media release, “Today marks a seminal moment in our City’s history in our efforts to reimagine public safety.”
“Through this unarmed response pilot for non-violent calls, we will help Angelenos get the mental health and other support services they need from trained professionals. We will also free up police officers to do the work they are trained to do,” the council president added.
“Ultimately, this will also allow us to provide our Black and Brown communities with the resources they deserve.”
By a vote of 14-0, the council voted to enact the program, according to KABC-TV.
The council said it will issue a proposal “for a non-profit partner to implement a pilot program, and in addition seek recommendations from relevant departments on creating a new classification of city employees that would be responsible for responding to nonviolent calls for service that are currently handled by police officers.”
Gee, what could go wrong?
A lot comes to the imagination when you look at the types of situations in which LA’s Democratic legislative body has deemed no longer essential for police officers to handle.
These include calls which are related to mental health, substance abuse and people making suicidal threats.
California’s leaders, all the way down to the municipal level, continue to thumb their noses at common sense.
In fact, really bad ideas are a national epidemic with regard to Democrats and law enforcement.
The party’s nominee for president, Joe Biden, actually said during his ABC town hall event Thursday that police officers need to learn to shoot violent criminals “in the leg.”
“You have to teach people how to de-escalate circumstances, de-escalate. So instead of anybody coming at you, and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg,” Biden said when addressing police reform.
That statement obviously lacks any common sense, but the logic behind it is shared by many, including LA’s elected Democrats.
Hopefully, their decision to prioritize woke politics over the health and wellbeing of their citizens and soon-to-be unarmed first responders won’t backfire.
Of course, it probably will, especially when you look at other calls which will be relegated away from police and to crisis responders under the proposed program.
Some calls with a subject in a state of “behavioral distress” will no longer be handled by police, nor will calls regarding “conflict resolution” and “welfare checks.”
Unarmed responders in the coming pilot program might have a bit more insight into their roles with each respective call, and its details, but with regard to the bigger picture, this decision completely encapsulates the politics which have turned many of California’s cities into wastelands.
LA is a mecca for the homeless, and many of them are mentally ill and on drugs.
The city, like many others, also has its share of domestic abusers, killers and rapists, all of whom likely are behaviorally distressed and in a state of conflict prior to committing violent crimes.
As we know, the council’s unanimous decision to initiate a pilot program of unarmed responders for 9-1-1 calls is about pandering and politics.
But the council still had to make that clear in a media release obtained by KTTV.
“Calling the police on George Floyd about an alleged counterfeit $20 bill ended his life,” District 10 Councilman Herb Wesson said. “If George Floyd had been met with unarmed, trained specialists for the nonviolent crime he was accused of, he would be turning 47 years old today. This plan will save lives, and I’m so proud of my colleagues on the Council for voting to move this forward.”
Following George Floyd’s death after Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for roughly nine minutes, elected officials in LA will now endanger the lives of local people in the name of social justice and perceived racial inequality.
This council is essentially insulting the Los Angeles Police Department with the decision.
The council told its citizens that its city’s cops are incapable of navigating situations which the department is and always has been, supremely qualified to handle.
If the city council thought troubled people in some situations reacted poorly to being corralled by cops, just wait until they find out how others will respond to being jammed up by unarmed bureaucrats.
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