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Unarmed social workers hired to respond to 911 calls in Seattle
Aug 25, 2023
While the council meeting was proceeding to defund the police and replace officers with social workers, a social worker was stabbed to death by her homeless client.
Social workers could soon be responding to 911 calls in Seattle instead of police officers thanks to efforts of the anti-cop Seattle City Council.
Councilmember Lisa Hebold, who led the effort to defund the city’s police department in 2020, said during an interview on Friday that the city is beginning to hire six unarmed "crisis responders" instead of police officers for emergency calls through a new 911 Dual Dispatch/Alternate Crisis Response pilot program for an "alternate response team."
Earlier this month, the program received $1.6 million as part of the midyear supplemental budget.
Herbold said, "Usually I’m complaining about how delayed we are and how frustrated I am that we’re not meeting our benchmarks for developing this program. But today I’m really, really happy to report that the city is hiring for the six positions for its first pilot alternate response team. It’s going to be a way for 911 operators to dispatch calls to somebody other than police, somebody other than fire, a crisis responder who is unarmed.”
The activist council member, who has a record of calling the police for minor offenses that she attempted to decriminalize continued, "The police department will be aware of the dispatch. They may attend, they may stage nearby, or they just may have situational awareness. Each call is going to be different, but it’s really exciting that we’re finally up and running with hiring the folks who will be doing this really important work that we have been working on since, I think, August of 2020."
In Aug 2020 during the riots that rocked Seattle, Herbold led the charge to defund the city’s police force in order to in part fund social worker programs.
The effort resulted in millions being cut from the department and a massive exodus of officers. Since then, the department has lost almost 600 officers and the city has suffered record homicides and violent crime during the crime wave that followed.
While the council meeting was proceeding to defund the police and replace officers with social workers, a social worker was stabbed to death by her homeless client.
https://thepostmillennial.com/unarmed-social-workers-hired-to-respond-to-911-calls-in-seattle
Seattle social worker slain by client as city council further defunds police
https://thepostmillennial.com/seattle-social-worker-slain-by-client-as-city-council-further-defunds-police