Policing social workers

 For those advocating that police be replaced with social workers in order to end police brutality, follow that thought through. Think about the cases of police brutality which have much of the population entirely rightly outraged. How exactly would these acts of brutality have been prevented if social workers had been deployed instead of police? What would social workers do differently? Exactly what power do you imagine social workers to have?

The solution to police brutality may be complex and multifaceted, but the first and simplest and most correct first step we can take is to simply stop sending authority figures after people who aren't directly, imminently, physically violating another human's rights.

Not replacing police with social workers. Not training police in bias and sensitivity. Just stopping the entire practice of sending authority figures after people who aren't directly, imminently, physically violating another human's rights.

If you see someone sleeping on the street, someone talking to themself, or someone speaking a different language, you can just... NOT call police. Not call a social worker. Not call anyone. Just leave them alone.

It's great to advocate funding for housing, shelters, and voluntary, consensual healthcare, but these services don't need to be administered in the form of reports made by third parties.

For all medical-model people scream about how "mental health is just like physical health!" no one calls police because someone at the bus stop has a rash, and if they did, the solution wouldn't be "replace police with dermatologists."

Everyone is expressing a different set of opinions about what to do about police brutality, and for the record, mine is "Fire 95% of police (including all with violence or racism allegations) and keep the remaining 5% for violence against human bodies only, then redirect the funding to voluntary non-gatekept healthcare and housing and transportation." But in no situation is replacing police with social workers an improvement. If you don't want police menacing innocent people, especially people of color, especially disabled people of color -- and quite right, you shouldn't want that, and it's high time people are realizing the status quo is unacceptable -- why do you want social workers menacing innocent disabled people of color either? Why do you want anyone menacing innocent disabled people of color? Why can you not fathom a world in which disabled people of color go about their lives freely and un-menaced?