> Based on the rest of the comment, you are not listening to what I'm saying, nor are you offering anything to back up any opinions.
I'm listening to what you're saying, it's just incorrect.
> Specialization and limitations of labor means that you need to drastically increase headcount to maintain current surface levels, which is more expensive even if a significant subset is currently cheaper (non-union police are cheaper, but once these public sector unions unionize, costs go up significantly).
Why do we do any specialization in the labor force then? What's the point? After all, specialization only increases labor costs.
Or, perhaps specialized labor is more efficient, which is why it exists. An LEO is by far the most expensive person you could have respond to a situation and they aren't particularly effective at most of the situations they are called to.
You could replace huge chunks of your inefficient armed staff and increase the head count while not increasing costs. For Portland, our unarmed PS3 position is a little more than 1/2 the cost of an entry level armed LEO. That means we can have almost two of them for every one cop. We could have more people out on the street. More people helping out, having eyes in the community and generally being useful. As an added bonus, non-armed staff are more useful to the community because a huge chunk of the community is terrified of police and wont call them or communicate with them making them effectively useless in certain neighborhoods.
> Then you still have questions about efficacy of the replacements (mental health pros don't have a great track record without patient history in these situations)
Yikes, you want to talk about track records
"People with Untreated Mental Illness 16 Times More Likely to Be Killed By Law Enforcement"
https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/key-issues/criminali...
Mental health professionals are far far far far far more qualified to safely help someone who is experiencing a crisis.
> and the fact that you still need to provide training to the existing force due to their exposure to these events either spontaneously or through misclassification.
The mild amount of training they get is fine. If they encounter someone in mental health crisis, they should disengage immediately and call for someone who is trained to handle that situation.
> It also sounds like you have some odd and unexplained bias against armed people (in many states, the people you're adding can be and currently are armed even if it's not a part of their job).
Guns make almost every single situation worse. I'm not sure my 'bias' is odd. Most of developed world recognizes that guns are terrible and that people walking around with them is a pretty dumb idea. The USA just has a fetish for making boom boom with them so we live with our school shootings, mass shootings, and frequent accidental deaths.
I'm not aware of any governmental agency that lets their staff bring guns to work when it isn't part of their job. Would you care to provide a source? Even the gutter backwater of Texas doesn't allow them.