Debate assignment: Police funding reallocation

Discussion board post for NURS609 Trends and Issues, posted on February 7 2023. Post is part of points-of-information discussion following debate assignment, where I was assigned as opposition to police funding reallocation. Post is responding to colleague that brought up recent New York mandate for police to apprehend all mental health cases and bring to hospital.

I recognize your concerns about this mandate in New York, and while it is related to police funding, it is not reason enough to consider re-allocating police funding.

First, there are some things to clarify about this mandate:

1. "Existing state (New York) laws allow both the police and medical workers to take people involuntarily to a hospital when their behavior poses a threat of “serious harm” to themselves or others." (Newman & Fitzsimmons, 2022) Involuntary admission to hospital is already a practice, including in Canada, where people can be admitted under the Mental Health Act if they are a harm to themselves or others. I work in an emergency department, and while this is simply anecdotal evidence, I am quite familiar with Form 1 and 42 detainment of people in the emergency department, often brought in by police, without release until they have been cleared by a psychiatrist. More often than not, however, the psychiatrist admits the patient (involuntarily or voluntarily) for further treatment. This is already law and practice.

2. "The city directive states that “unawareness or delusional misapprehension of surroundings” or “delusional misapprehension of physical condition or health” could be grounds for hospitalization." (Newman & Fitzsimmons, 2022) Again, already law and common practice in Canada as well. Also, as my colleague stated according to their work with geriatrics, it is only if patients are deemed capable by a psychiatrist that they can make their own decisions regardless of how harmful they are. This is also true of mental health. Patients are brought in to hospital and assessed by a psychiatrist to determine whether admission is necessary on some basis, such as being so incapable of self-care that they are a danger to themselves. This would not change from this mandate because...

3. "Adams said the city would direct hospitals to keep those patients until they are stable and discharge them only when there is a workable plan in place to connect them to ongoing care." Currently, hospitals cite that a lack of psychiatric beds are a main reason that patients are discharged from hospital too early (Newman & Fitzsimmons, 2022). As far as I can tell, this is the only factor this mandate is really changing, as the Mayor is promising to increase number of psych beds in hospitals, which I do not think is a bad thing given that medical professionals deem these patients to require further treatment.

4. Most elements of this mandate already exist and are already common practice in Canada and, apparently, America. (In my personal opinion, I think this is just boisterousness from the Mayor and will not actually change anything. Not an argument, just an opinion.) Also, I want to point out the most important part, the final decision of hospitalizing a patient rests with the medical workers. Just because police bring a patient in, does not mean that patient will be hospitalized, and police (as I noted in my Rebuttal) do not have control over this.

As an argument for police re-allocation, it is invalid:

Premise 1: Mayor mandates homeless people with mental health problems be admitted to hospital.

Premise 2: If police bring people to the hospital for unfounded reasons, it could be a breach of human rights.

Conclusion: Reallocate funding from police.

This is not a logical argument, there is a lot missing before that conclusion. The first and second premise are completely unrelated, and the second premise is hypothetical. In order to arrive at that conclusion of reallocating funding, which is what this debate is specifically about, you would need more factual support that police are directly impacted and actually causing harm with this mandate, at the very least. Even then, you would need a few more premises to arrive logically to that conclusion.

References

Newman, A., & Fitzsimmons, E. G. (2022, November 29). New York City to involuntarily remove mentally ill people from streets. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/nyregion/nyc-mentally-ill-involuntary-custody.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Discussion board post for NURS609 Trends and Issues, posted on February 6 2023. Post is part of points-of-information discussion following debate assignment, where I was assigned as opposition to police funding reallocation.

I would like to respond to this statement by my opponent:

"B.C. Housing (n.d.) found a decrease of 42 % who were admitted to the hospital less often, and 40% had been to emergency rooms less often. As research notes, admissions are primarily facilitated by police services. Therefore this decrease in emergency admissions demonstrates a direct favorable inference on the decreased need for police involvement with the introduction of modular housing (B.C. Coroners Service Death Review Panel, 2019)."

The following invalid argument is being made.

Premise 1: After BC housing, fewer people were admitted to hospital or visited ERs.

Premise 2: Some police calls related to mental health involve bringing patients to ER for hospital admission.

Conclusion: Therefore, there is a decreased need for police after modular housing. (Cause is being assumed.)

A valid conclusion would be: Some reduction in ER visits may have been related to fewer police calls. (No cause.)

This is a false cause/post hoc fallacy being committed because it presumes that the BC housing project directly leads to less police involvement, as demonstrated by fewer ER visits. It also assumes that the ER visits that decreased are mental health based. However, homeless people could visit the ER for injuries, chronic illness, and environmental toxins, which would be decreased from now having homes. While that is generally a good thing, it is not related to police. Hence why I say this is not evidence related to this debate.

Actual data shows that police visits did not decrease as a result of modular housing projects. For example, in 2014, a 147-unit social housing project for the homeless near Vancouver recorded 729 police calls over 16 months when it first opened, for "fights, drugs, weapons, threats, break-ins, stolen property, frauds, suicide attempts, domestic disputes, missing persons, abandoned 911 calls and assisting paramedics and firefighters" (Howell, 2014). Number of police calls do vary over time and at different sites, but there is no clear data presenting a decrease, and we cannot just assume that all drops in ER visits are related to mental health calls that would have involved police.

While modular housing does show social benefits, it does not necessarily demonstrate a decrease in police activity, which is why the same report that my opponent cites about modular housing still insists that police are fundamental to the mental health care response (BC Coroners Service Death Review Panel, 2019).

References

BC Coroners Service Death Review Panel. (2019). Opportunities for different outcomes: Police: A crucial component of B.C.’s mental health system [PDF]. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/birth-adoption-death-marriage-and-divorce/deaths/coroners-service/death-review-panel/policeencountersdrp.pdf

Howell, M. (2014, September 23). Social housing project generates 729 police calls in first 16 months. VancouverIsAwesome. https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/courier-archive/news/social-housing-project-generates-729-police-calls-in-first-16-months-2985712