And Why Carry, Either?, Ctd

A reader responds to my remarks that traffic stops shouldn’t necessarily require the officer carry a gun:

Sorry Hue, this one is plain dumb.

The Castile incident had problems on both sides I give Castile 60% of the blame, maybe a bit more, and it could have just as easily resulted in death for your unarmed traffic stop only cop. Read the report on the death again. Hell, even use the CNN one – that was pretty accurate – if you want to avoid conservative bias. The Wikipedia entry is also valid. If indeed Castile had been stopped :”more than 40 times” in that area, he knew the drill. Dunno about you, but on the rare times I’m stopped by the time the officer gets to my car I have my license and insurance in hand, with hands on top of the steering wheel and window down, with wallet on dash in case he needs anything else. Castile knew that, but probably because he was so wasted he didn’t do that, and instead says “I have a gun” and goes digging on his strong side for his wallet, failing to stop the motion when the officer yells at him to do so. Change this scenario to the all to common one where a driver or passenger _does_ go for a gun, and your unarmed cop has about two seconds to run for cover before becoming a statistic. The whole unarmed police in the US argument is completely invalid.

I’m guessing you have no one in your family who’s a LEO? Or know anyone who is? ANY incident can go from calm to deadly in the space of a few seconds. And the “we’ll have social workers respond to mental illness calls” and “medical staff respond to OD calls” is also deadly. We already have too many ambush setups in the US against responders. The police are the first response people to, among other things, evaluate the security of the situation. In my EMT-B training it was very explicit: Make sure the police have secured a situation before entering it. If you send medical before police you risk completely helpless medical staff. Sorry, I reiterate, this was plain dumb.

I must admit, I’m fascinated by how my correspondent has been trained to perceive the cops as a trigger-happy, dangerous group who must be carefully managed, and I don’t like it. I don’t have any sort of cure for it, but I deplore it and I think it is symptomatic of the current distrust between the citizenry and the cops these days.

Concerning the actual incident, my reader’s summary agrees with my recollection of the various summaries I’ve read since the incident. Yeah, it wasn’t smart to be high while driving, and carrying while driving also seems unwise. But he apparently was complying with the law by announcing he had it.

Whether or not it’s dumb to not send armed police to all incidents appears to be already up for experiment, as I noted in this post when corresponding with a different reader:

* The “Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets” (CAHOOTS) of Eugene Oregon. CAHOOTS is a part of the 911 system such that they will be selected as the first responders — ahead of police — for situations involving mental health. Eugene Police Officers say ” [CAHOOTS provides] resources not available to the ordinary cop…They are an invaluable resource”.

I haven’t had time to track down CAHOOTS to see if it’s still in use and its record. OK, I did a quick search, it appears to be associated with the White Bird Clinic of Eugene, OR:

CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets) provides mobile crisis intervention 24/7 in the Eugene-Springfield Metro area. CAHOOTS is dispatched through the Eugene police-fire-ambulance communications center, and within the Springfield urban growth boundary, dispatched through the Springfield non-emergency number. Each team consists of a medic (either a nurse or an EMT) & a crisis worker (who has at least several years experience in the mental health field). CAHOOTS provides immediate stabilization in case of urgent medical need or psychological crisis, assessment, information, referral, advocacy & (in some cases) transportation to the next step in treatment. CAHOOTS offers a broad range of services, including but not limited to: …

This link has some articles on CAHOOTS from 2019. There’s a Wikipedia page, but I don’t see any sort of assessment of results. This link suggests they have a long history, actually.

On July 4, 1989, CAHOOTS began its first shift funded by the [Eugene Police Department] with a second-hand beat-up van. When emergency dispatch received calls that required help but not law enforcement, they routed the call to CAHOOTS. At first, the group worked 40 hours a week, and they have since expanded to 24-hour service, four crisis vans and a total of nearly 50 employees.

1989? And I’ve never heard of them. You’d think Whole Earth Review would have mentioned them at least once. But with that sort of longevity and apparently moving on to other cities, according to Wikipedia, such as Austin, TX, Denver, Oakland, NYC, and others, sending in specialized groups rather than armed police may be a compelling model. Perhaps not for traffic stops, although I still am dismayed at the entire procedure my correspondent feels is necessary, but perhaps for some situations.