Don't call the police

We've seen far too many stories of people calling 911 because a family member or neighbor is having a behavioral health crisis  -- a psychotic break, a meth overdose, suicidal -- and the police show up and shoot and kill the person. They're allowed to do that, they feel endangered don't you know.

 

Denver has a program called Support Team Assisted Response,  which instead of armed police dispatches EMTs and behavioral health clinicians to these situations.

• STAR has responded to 2,294 calls for service that would have otherwise been dispatched to police
• STAR has never called for police back up due to a safety issue

Emphasis mine. These responders are trained to deal with people who are experiencing this sort of crisis. Police are not. That's 2,294 calls to which the police did not need to respond.  So yes, you can take some money out of the police budget and put it here instead. I just won't use the D word.