Actually don't call 911
Driving to school I saw a man walking down Columbia Boulevard in the pouring rain. He was barefoot and gesticulating wildly, walking directly in the lane of traffic. Visibility was low and speeds were high there, as usual. I worried that someone would come over the crest and hit him.
“I should call 911.”
My instinct was to call 911 so that this man didn’t get hurt.
Police respond when you call 911. I didn’t want this man arrested, I wanted him protected. Even if the police did respond, the inventory of their toolbox is low. The odds are high he’d be taken to jail, and I’ve seen what happens to people in acute mental health crises in jail. Solitary confinement. My instinct to call 911 would most likely hurt this man. Even though I know the hurt that police and jail cause, as citizens we have no other recourse and we’ve been taught to call 911.
We’ve created a system where the only first responders to people in mental health crisis are police officers and all they’ll do is throw you in jail.
Police are not equipped to act as mental health first responders—nor do they want to be. I heard the deputy chief of the Portland Police department critique the system that’s been created, where the task has fallen to police officers because there was no one else to do it. 40% of calls to Portland police out of the central precinct were for “disturbance” calls, almost all of which would have been better suited for a response by a mental health team and not police. It does not need to be this way.