> Studies, surveys, anything at all to back up your claim. Sounds like there isn't (use of absolutes in your statement was probably the problem).

Most people are generally capable of reading that as an opinion absolute statement.

Like, if I said 'Casino Royale is the best James Bond movie of the Daniel Craig era' that's an absolute statement but the reader can intuitively understand that its not going to be objectively provable and that it's clear its an opinion.

Now, if I said 'It's a fact that....' it'd be fair to ask for evidence. But I didn't.

> Depends on one's perspective and a bunch of other factors. You might be surprised about how many people carry guns in various professions (medical workers, mental health worker, various first responders, the general public, etc). The vast majority of people never have to fire their weapon. Most never even have to use their weapon. It's utility isn't solely based on being fired.

The norm in most of the world is that unarmed people respond to most issues. If you think mental health workers are carrying guns on the job, you are just extremely uninformed on this topic.

>You talk about armed personnel being more expensive. That's not exactly true. People become expensive based on the level of training they need/have.

So it is exactly true then isn't it? Not only do you have to pay the increased cost of training and certifying , you actually pay them more hourly too to carry that gun too.

>You could still use police as responders for mental health issues with some level of training while waiting for existing social workers or medical professionals to arrive.

Why would you though? Police have no real training in mental health, the week long classes they take are really not useful. Remember that actual mental health professionals generally need a minimum of six years of education. Why in the world would you want someone with no training and gun to be the first responder to someone having a mental health crisis?

> How so? Or is this another case of using the wrong words

No, they are unqualified

> If it's a matter of training, it may be cheaper to provide police with additional training rather than hire additional forces an incur all that overhead of benefits etc.

It isn't though. Police are by far more expensive than people who are more qualified, which in many ways is sad, but it is what is. The idea that you can train police into being mental health professionals just shows the lack of understanding about what it takes to be a mental health professional. When it comes to lower level calls, why would it be better to send a more expensive employee to handle a call a less expensive can handle? Is that what your work does? Send the most expensive labor possible to handle simple problems?

> ou seem to accept that violent situations require police response, so would be qualified for that.

It's the only thing they are somewhat qualified for, yes. They do need much better training and weed all the 'killology' cops.

> It sounds like the quality of life stuff are generally easy tasks that police are qualified to handle (you even mention a police report for a stolen bike).

Sorry, they are unqualified to handle most of their calls, but that is an example of one where they are overpaid to handle that call.

>The mental health situations depend on the level of training. Relatively few departments have adequate mental health training. I think this could be handled with training on how to approach those situations and talk people down while the social worker or mental health professional arrives.

Mental health is a professional degree. There is no amount of week long trainings that will make police officers good responders to mental health calls.

You of course have spent a lot of time talking about how armed police could do all these jobs, but you really haven't talked about why they should.

What's the point of spending tons of money getting a cop even moderately good at responding to mental health crisis when we could just hire someone who is better trained and cheaper to respond to mental health crisis?

You are locked into this idea that an armed police officer should be the first responder to every issue which gets back to my original point, you want police because that's the law enforcement construct you grew up with. Why in the world would you send an armed person to handle a bicycle report? You want to spend tons of money to try and maintain the status quo, which isn't going to improve things, rather than reallocating money to people who are significantly more qualified.