that shouldn't be wholesale rejected alongside the "no police" non-sense, that involve social workers as a part of emergency response. Unfortunately, who, what, and how these ideas were brought forward has poisoned the debate by allowing it to be classified as some sort of punishment of police or by ignoring the potentially good ideas by bunching them in with the moronic.

For things like drug use (not dealing), mental issues, and homelessness a social worker probably should be involved and potentially solely involved. How the heck does a cop solve either of those problems well? Why should a cop's training be wasted on those problems? Is the reaction of the person different to a cop vs social worker? Does a cop even want to do these things?

What I envision, but I'm doing this in 10 minutes, actual work needs to be done, is that statistics are collected to determine how accurately a 911/non-emergency dispatcher can identify different categories/situations as violent/non-violent. If research shows that can be done with a high confidence, then we change emergency protocols for the category, e.g. non-violent homeless, drug, etc., based on whatever points need to be considered based on the research/knowledge people who do this for a living have and in those cases (a) social worker(s) is sent and in some cases paired with (a) cop(s).

Something like homeless people loitering may be better served by a social worker who can guide the person to city services. In some, perhaps many, cases, maybe a social worker should be the one who initiates the conversation but a cop is there or nearby just in case.