It’s also important to recognize the relevance of class warfare here. Many many many organizations responsible for human safety often cut back on staff and hours so much that you’ll take a piece of shit watching your back because if they get fired your boss is gonna take those savings as a win and not hire anyone else and then no one will be watching your back so you just tolerate the piece of shit until they finally do something you can’t conscience anymore (which is waaay too late) or until they also become a danger to you, and the fact that they’re making individuals make that call on reporting the person responsible for their safety is a huge problem that needs to be addressed if we’re going to make any headway.
I don’t wanna talk about it in detail but I was put in a similar situation at the age of like 19 when I didn’t know any better and was constantly dragging another technician away from patients or even having to put my physical body between them but if I had reported them I would’ve been completely alone with the literally criminally insane men on my unit. I thank my stars every day they got fired on a regulatory technicality instead of actual patient harm because at the age of 19 with a highschool diploma and two weeks technician training I had no idea where to even start (and its also hard to get your head on straight when you’ve got that much adrenaline and cortisol in you for months on end). Oh and yeah, no, they didn’t hire anyone else and thank God I felt shit heating up and left because the day I did they had to put down a literal riot because of the conditions they were leaving these people in. If it weren’t for the patient care / working conditions (they’re the same thing but I’ll get to that) I probably never would have left that patient population; while they certainly weren’t cute harmless little kittens, those criminally insane men were some of the realest people I ever met and I learned so much from them and they’re almost entirely responsible for my WASP fundie deprogramming but I digress.
There’s also an element of if you report and nothing happens, or even if something does happen, you can get “frozen out” and no one in the entire organization will watch your back or some people will even push you into dangerous situations to get rid of you by getting you to quit or …worse. I saw so many people become persona non grata and while I fortunately had a strong reputation as a hard worker looking out for everyone’s safety, I still got dirty looks for even helping frozen-out coworkers with housekeeping tasks like wiping down the dayroom tables. I’ve got uniquely good instincts for navigating violent situations in ways that turn out ok for everyone involved (perks of getting beat as a kid), but 90% of people don’t have the skillset to balance on that tightrope and wind up having to make a choice between going along with shit or getting frozen out (even I was lucky to make it as long as I did snatching that idiot off my patients). So you’d have to have it be a tolerable and high paid enough position even with high standards that you can afford to just replace entire departments quickly. Defunding won’t do that, so the real answer is just making sure the funds they do have go more to regulatory oversight, but especially the most to the lowest rung people who do the most hands-on work.
I have thoughts about how they should have to be licensed and have oversight boards and a couple other things similar to Healthcare, but there’s a lot of problems in all sectors that just aren’t going to get solved until we address the fact that no one wants to pay for direct human services labor of any kind anymore. Hands-on blue collar work has been just so fundamentally devalued at the actual monetary level that even people who WANT to do it and do a good, honest job that serves other humans can’t even afford to sometimes, both monetarily and in costs to their physical wellbeing. So there’s nothing left that’s desirable about these positions except having power over others, and no shit that’s going to attract the worst of humanity.
Gun control is also critical and the lack of it is the #1 reason I don’t work in community mental health services despite specifically specializing in violent and malignantly manipulative behavior. I’d 100% be an amazing violent conflict deescalator (I’ve only been doing it almost a decade now) but the risk of getting shot is just not worth it. And I can tell you that’s also on the cops minds because I’ve chatted with them while sorting out emergency psych hold paperwork. I think even without that shitty “warrior cop” training they’re exposing them to, the question “what if they have a gun” is going to be at the forefront of their minds. Until that’s a lot less likely and / or they’re much more likely to know ahead of time, they’re going to want to shoot first before the other guy has even a hypothetical chance.
“Defund the police” is a great catchy tagline that just sounds like nonsense to the people actually doing this work or who are adjacent to it, so no wonder it’s not going anywhere. Fuck I keep adding shit but this is a topic I’m really passionate about (like I said, I loved my forensic patients so much and they deserve so much more). There’s a saying in L&D that baby isn’t safe if mom (/ the primary caregiver) isn’t safe but it really applies to pretty much any person responsible for another human beings’ safety. No human can ever fully devote themselves to another’s safety if they aren’t already reasonably sure of their own.
Honestly my fiance just listened to my rant and came up with a much better tagline: “make the cops realize they’re poor too” because blue-collar class solidarity is the only real way out of this mess (but even that’s not really as catchy). On a similar note there are also a bunch of people with like 0.5-1mil in assets not even in the bank who think they’re the rich we’re talking about taxing who need to realize they’re just upper middle class / a little safer than us, not actually rich in the “no life consequences ever” way that no one should ever be, and that taxing billionaires actually benefits them too (like my idiot parents I don’t talk to anymore). Anyway I need to log off before I write a damn book (I can’t, I keep coming back. Again, passion, LOL).