Reason First: Should Law Enforcement Act as Mental Health Care Professionals?

In opioid and heroin usage cases in New Castle County, Delaware, the police have devised a plan to curb the amount of injuries and deaths associated with using certain narcotics and the abuse of prescription drugs. While it would seem odd for an officer to carry a gun and drugs, it’s already happened in other cities. Police often are armed with both a pistol and a canister of naloxone. But what is more disturbing is the fact that they must now become physicians and psychiatrists on the beat. This is unacceptable. The role of police officers is to protect individual lives and property of the citizens of a given area. They are not shrinks with a badge. It is totally improper for the police in New Castle to become healthcare officials.

The two million dollars that poured into this project could have supplied the restitution of drug dealers who are serving prison terms for nonviolent crimes. While it is a step forward to send people not to jail but to treatment and care facilities, it is still not the role of the cops to provide mental well-being to a victim of an overdose. Addiction ought to have nothing to do with how police operate. They are tasked with fulfilling the position as guardians over cities, counties, and states. Their responsibility is to ensure the safety of all inhabitants of these regions.

What gums up the process is nonsense like training police to be social workers, psychiatrists, and psychologists. They’re almost literally guns. They employ force when necessary and present themselves in a professional manner as being part of a monopoly on that force. The government is supposed to shield individuals from all hurt, harm, or hazard leveled by a perpetrator(s). If someone wants to inflict harm on their body in a proper setting without posing a threat against anyone else, how is it the cops' business to either arrest or provide a chat about a person’s state of mind?

The problem is not to address addicts and those who choose to do drugs. For families of these persons, it may seem like a good thing for police officers to offer mental support. They would be mistaken. Instead of looking at this as an “epidemic,” the crisis should be seen as something that actual medical staff including executives, doctors, and nurses should handle. Police should be concerned with nabbing robbers, murderers, and crooks. The time that it would take to have a psychiatric session with a cop could lead to someone being robbed, beaten, have their property stolen from them, or killed in cold blood. By skipping over the facts of reality regarding the proper position of police officers could be out there fighting crime. Rather than playing doctor in the streets, they would be afforded the opportunity to take down those miscreants that disrupt society.

Service professionals should stick to their line of work. How about this: Let’s arm our executive directors, doctors, and nurses and have them do the jobs of the police. I’ll let you discuss the outcome of that scenario. And so goes for the cops of New Castle County, Delaware that must contend with actual criminals and those people who just want to get high on their own property. While it may be sad for someone to lose a family member or friend to addiction, what is sadder is the fact that this new implementation has been put into place. Because law enforcement are already strained with dealing with the low-lifes of the cities and towns that they cover, now there will be an extra weight on their backs along with targets. What police and city officials ought to work on is decriminalizing and legalizing all drugs. This way, the idea of a medi-cop would be a thing not worth putting into effect.