Of interest:
https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.7/publ...ing-the-police

Mobile, community-based crisis programs employ first responders that are not police to address disturbances where crimes are not being committed. One of the nation’s longest-running examples is CAHOOTS — Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets — in Eugene, Oregon. CAHOOTS has inspired similar programs in other cities in the region, including the Denver Alliance for Street Health Response, Mobile Assistance Community Responders of Oakland and Portland Street Response in Oregon.

Such programs take police out of the equation when someone is going through a mental health crisis, struggling with substance abuse, or experiencing homelessness. When police show up, situations can escalate, and the use of force can be disproportionate, especially towards Black people; a 2016 study estimated that 20% to 50% of fatal encounters with law enforcement involved someone with a mental illness. Advocates say the CAHOOTS model shows those encounters aren’t inevitable: Less than 1% of the calls that CAHOOTS responds to need police assistance. The CAHOOTS system relies on trauma-informed de-escalation and harm reduction, which reduces calls to police, averts harmful arrest-release-repeat cycles, and prevents violent police encounters.

THE WHITE BIRD CLINIC in Eugene started CAHOOTS 31 years ago as an alternative for people who felt alienated or disenfranchised from systems that had failed them, CAHOOTS Operations Coordinator Tim Black said in an interview. “We’re there to listen, we’re there to empathize, and we’re there to really reflect on what they’re going through,” and to discuss ways to access resources to help them. CAHOOTS — a free, 24/7 community service — is funded by Eugene and neighboring Springfield at a cost of around $2 million, equal to just over 2% of their police departments’ annual budgets. The program is currently fundraising to expand and make up for COVID-19-related budget cuts.

Under the model, instead of police, a medic and a mental health worker are dispatched for calls such as welfare checks or potential overdoses. In 2017, such teams answered 17% of the Eugene Police Department’s overall call volume. This has saved the city, on average, $8.5 million each year from 2014-2017, according to the White Bird Clinic.

hough CAHOOTS uses the police department’s central dispatch, it is distinct from the department. Employees do not carry guns or wear uniforms; instead, they wear casual hoodies and drive vans with a dove painted on the side. CAHOOTS’ methods are designed to prevent escalation, Black said. “If an officer enters that situation with power, with authority, with that uniform and a command presence, that situation is really likely to escalate.”

It’s a false assumption that people experiencing a mental health crisis will respond violently, Black said, and a police response is often unnecessary. CAHOOTS fielded over 24,000 calls last year; less than 1% of them needed assistance from police, and no one has ever been seriously injured.
CAHOOTS differs from other mental health partnerships with the police in important ways: Staff employ “unconditional positive regard,” a phrase from psychology that means complete support and acceptance for the people they encounter, and the organization is run as a “consensus collective,” rather than a hierarchy. Every employee’s voice carries equal weight.

Each crisis worker completes 500 hours of training in areas including medical care, conflict resolution and crisis counseling. Around 60% of CAHOOTS’ patients are homeless, and about 30% have severe or persistent mental illness. “The patient that we’re serving is the expert in their situation,” Black said. “They know that we’re a voluntary resource and that we’re not going to take their rights away just because we’ve shown up on scene.”


Quote Originally Posted by Gilrandir View Post
It has nothing to do with charity. I pay attnetion to the facts that are overlooked by the lopsided presentation.
That's not how you're presenting. You interposed yourself to redirect attention from malgovernance and racial repression to the mixed record of a murdered man. To do this implies that you believe the latter should be emphasized in place of the former.

Attitudes. You may have failed to notice but this forum (as probably all social media) is about expressing attitudes.
OK, but why and whence? Are we here reproducing irritable gestures lacking mental ingredients? It's impossible to say, but I like to assume that if I believed 'Trump is awful in every way but ultimately there is no philosophical justification for that belief' I wouldn't bother to post about it.

Since officially all Soviet people were brethern supposed to converge into a pan-ethnic entity one of these days racist attitudes were never shaped into "Kazakhs shouldn't be accepted to Universities" or "Let's not hire him because he is an Uzbek". Moreover, in national republics it could be vice versa with stressing prevalence of local nations over Russians.


Classically, xenophobia is the fear or hatred of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange. Not necesserily of other race. And for the Soviet people all foreigners were supposed to be capitalists' agents dreaming of destroying the most beautiful country in the world. And internal populations were "our home traitors or foreing spies" that have to be dealt with.
They could be deviationists, spies, saboteurs, (((rootless cosmopolitans)))...

These labels and the force behind them were applied in an ethnically-discriminatory way as a general practice, but time and again it was constructed as an essentially ethnic disturbance against the state. Perpetually with non-Russians or Turkic peoples, but of course:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhdanov_Doctrine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish...cist_Committee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_plot

With no interent in eveidence, Soviet people who were separated from Europe and the rest of the world by the iron curtain were unaware of current ideological trends elsewhere.
The Soviet people were not so shut off from Europe that they abraded away the entire cultural and intellectual influence of the 19th century - indeed, the opposite was the case. The Soviet government was intensely interested in promulgating cultural products of Europe in the domains of art, architecture, literature, language, music, etc. In any case we are speaking of widespread ideas so common and basic that they were not much questioned, like the concept of marriage.

Even if it was otherwise with Chukovsky the ideological pressure of the Party and severe censorship wouldn't permit him to publish anything that was at odds with the official policy of the Party especially propagating racism in children's verses.
You beg the question in assuming party functionaries would be non-racist in identifying racism.

So far, you've been leaning on the excuses that the author had no choice but to wax poetic about the savagery of Africa (and that this would be non-racist in any case), that Russians were too isolated to have a concept of anti-African racism, or that the writings could not by any Scottish definition be racist if the Soviet government permitted their publication. Do you really not see the problem here?

By the way, I watched Trip to America again the other day and noticed some characters giving derogatory remarks about Africa. Was it racism? Or if they were blacks it wasn't? Just arrogance of Americans as to the poor uncultured areas? The same could be said of Chukovsky's verses, in my view.
If you mean Eddie Murphy's Coming to America, I haven't seen it since I was a small child so I can't comment on what you heard. But, where would black Americans get racist ideas about Africa (or themselves) from? From white Americans.

No torments satisfy me. But I again pay attention to the facts which differ from the general tendency.
It's tempting to rephrase that as, 'prefer alternative facts that dispense the need to grapple with racial conflict.' You've taken the time to emphasize an individual victim's crimes, challenge the idea of the presence of racism in policing, defend police outside the set of those in the act of committing egregious crimes, deprioritize black lives in the context of those lives being at issue, and... plus some of the most far-fetched Soviet revisionism I've ever encountered.

But you're recalcitrant toward the question of advancing racial equality in the US or elsewhere.

What does it all amount to?

That's a perfect idea. But I can't modify slogans of a political movement. If BLM supporters do it I would welcome the change. But would they? I doubt.
If only they had formed a collective council to issue dogma proclaiming the most promising strategy to orient the movement around satisfying the intuitions of the, uhhhh, racially-skeptical. Maybe they assumed people of good will could work it out independently.

There are so many easily-digestible images, skits, videos breaking the Lives issue down, but here's this one.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1278796654443888641

So can we surmise that 12%+ of cops who are black and aren't forced of their jobs nationwide are in agreement with racist practices exercised by their PDs?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omert%C3%A0

I express my take on the issue. You may qualify it as you like. Being emotionally invested impacts your objectivity (if it is attainable in such issues). Like when I criticized Trump my comments didn't seem to you tone-deaf and ignorant. How come? Not because they chime with your attitude?
I don't recall you criticizing Trump, but it is possible that I take issue with meritless, incorrect, or otherwise objectionable comments and don't take issue with comments that are not such.

If I told you that Ukraine is a country that exists, what complaint would you raise? None, and moreover it would be beneath your notice for response. In telling you though that Ukraine is the manor of a Martian grandee populated by cow-human hybrids, I would be offending any number of perspectives at a staggering level.

TLDR: Wrong is not due any tribute paid to right.