The "bring a social worker into law enforcement" hype is not all its cracked up to be
A bandaid will not fix a broken leg
When the police department first brought on mental health professionals (we called “DCR”s which stands for for “designated crisis responder”), I was optimistic. Many people I contacted were suffering from some type of mental health crisis. I would say about 20%. I have never had the desire to be a social worker. I am not the touchy-feely type. So I was glad to outsource that job to someone else.
Unfortunately it was not what I expected.
Here is one example of an interaction I had with a DCR.
There was a woman I had been working with for several months who was living in her car. I was called to her vehicle again - this time parked in an industrial area with 7 cats inside. This was a low number for her.
When I arrived I asked her how she was doing. She tumbled out of her car along with food wrappers and clothes, smiled and said she was fine.
We exchange pleasantries and I looked at the cats. They had food and water and look fine, so that was the end of my possible legal involvement. Take that for what you will.
As we’re talking she finally says something she has not said before. She asked about the possibility of moving into a homeless shelter. I immediately called for DCR, as this was their wheelhouse. One short hour later the DCR arrived with 5 police officers in tow.
Now I specifically point out that she had 5 officers with her, because that is problem number one in my opinion. DCRs are a drain on the resources of an already short staffed department. DCRs do not carry guns, yet speak with the most escalated and frankly unreasonable people. They are expected to carry on a conversation with someone who is having a mental breakdown and is likely a threat to themselves and others. Officers therefore must go to protect this DCR while they do this. While DCRs always travel with one police officer, anyone working in law enforcement who has responded to a person like this knows that that is often not enough bodies to control that situation.
Anyways, there she is with no gun, skinny jeans, hair down, dangly earrings, and 5 police officers. I now specifically mention her outfit not to be a bitch, but because this is indicative of problem number two. In my opinion, many people who sign up for the DCR job do not understand what they are getting into. We had two positions open, but I only ever met this one girl because the second position was a constant revolving door of employees. I know nothing about this girl’s work history, but I will say that in general if a young person goes to university for social work and immediately starts working as a DCR in a city like Tacoma; they will fail. Talking about the sociology of homelessness is absolutely useless when a raving man in the middle of street who has had untreated mental illness for 20 years and is high on heroin is screaming in your face.
She walked up to this woman with the cats and I left them to it. I walked away and started talking to the woman’s boyfriend. I do not know what happened in the conversation between those two, but in less than a minute the car door slammed right in the DCR’s face as she was still bent over speaking into the car. The boyfriend and I exchanged glances and then shrugged at each other. The DCR walked back over to the cops and that was the end of that.
City leadership and citizens do not understand the logistics of how this is supposed to work. They seemingly expect that a DCR will come into a situation and therapize a person into compliance within 15 minutes, and everyone can give themselves a pat on the back and go home happy. It’s unreasonable.
I suspect one of the reasons the DCR had the door slammed in her face was because she told the woman that she would have to get rid of some cats in order to move into the homeless shelter. This is another reason why this 15 minute therapy session is unreasonable. DCR is effectively useless on their own, and the city has not offered any viable options for chronically ill or homeless people. A few months ago a cop told me that it was a new policy to first offer help to a drug addict or mentally ill person before taking them to the hospital or jail. But there was no where to offer. So hypothetically, if the person said “Yes, I would love to go to a rehab”, the police officer would then have to say, “Well sorry I don’t have any options for you.” It’s almost laughable how poorly thought out these policies are.
Because of this, DCRs have (in my opinion) been reduced down to basically one job. That is to determine whether a person can be involuntarily committed. Of course this is a great tool, but officers already have this power themselves. It makes the decision safer for the case if a trained DCR makes that decision; but ultimately a cop can do this anyways.
I told this story of my experience with the Tacoma DCR to a Seattle law enforcement employee. This person has been working with Seattle law enforcement for over 10 years. She immediately confirmed my suspicions that Seattle was also having these problems.
“The response time is insane. It will sometimes take 2 hours for a DCR to arrive….when a cop calls, and by that time the subject is more escalated and suspicious than before because they feel like, ‘Okay if you really cared about me then why did it take so long for you to get here?’”
She brought up the idea in Seattle that social workers should be sent to some calls rather than police. She laughed bitterly and said,
“They will get stabbed. Or attacked and killed in some way.”
I believe her mind went immediately to a potential stabbing because in December of 2020 a Seattle social worker was stabbed to death by her client.
In March of 2020 a Sonoma social worker was killed by “a teenager she was trying to help.”
In January of 2022 a Springfield social worker was stabbed to death while doing a home visit to check on a tip of child endangerment.
In February of 2022 a Cleveland man was sentenced for punching, suffocating, and raping a social worker at knife-point.
It is my opinion that just like law enforcement officers, these DCRs have been recklessly thrown at problems by politicians with no regard for the outcome. This does not work.