The City of Huntsville recently announced a “partnership” with Huntsville Police and WellStone Behavioral Health to develop a crisis response plan that will pair Huntsville police officers already certified in crisis intervention with a mental health professional when responding to mental health calls.
WTF! It’s worthy of note that Alabama Governor Kay Ivey just signed a bill into law that prohibits the use of “Vaccine Passports” in the State. No businesses or schools etc. may require proof of covid vaccination. Kudos to the Governor for nipping in the bud this socialist attack on the people of Alabama.
But, it’s like the City of Huntsville can advance polices that are even worse and it goes under the radar. In the first place, the mental health system is likely the most corrupt of all medical sectors because of it’s subjectivity. And we already know how much corruption there is across the board. The “partnership” is a conflict of interest at best and outright racketeering in the end analysis. It’s the very essence of the unconstitutional deep-state conspiracy.
At face value and in the immediate shadow of former Huntsville police officer Billy Ben Darby’s murder conviction of Jeffrey Parker – who had been accused of mental illness – the City of Huntsville is engaging in a tactic to shift focus away from the bad cop and to reinforce blame onto Jeffrey Parker. I’m convinced, it’s invasion of privacy, it’s jihad and obfuscation in the classic sense.
The fact is, cops do have to be behavioral specialists to begin with – not mental health experts. Supposably, about twenty per-cent of Huntsville officers have already been trained in crisis intervention but, I’ll bet I’m not the only one who would suggest this has only armed them in the combative tactics of psyoptic warfare.
The real problem is much more simple to solve. But you can’t solve the problem until you are willing to admit there is a problem. A large number of cops in Huntsville are good ole boys who grew up on the Alabama plantation and believe in the unconstitutional authoritarian system. They have a badge and a gun (and an affinity cult), and they actually believe they are the law, goddamit they’re in charge – of everything.
Madison County District Attorney Rob Broussard was right in saying the problem in the murder of Jeffrey Parker was Billy Ben Darby. But the real problem was in Darby’s hiring and training to begin with. Obviously, his psychological background was not competently vetted. In essence, Darby is mentally ill and the department failed to weed him out.
The underlying factor is money. The City can’t or won’t provide the funding needed for more extensive training and more officers on the job to respond to calls when needed. There is a time when cops will have to use deadly force, but we’ve seen over and again nationally, and in Huntsville, that excessive force and shoot to kill are go to protocols when they don’t need to be. But, it takes training and experience. I’m not an advocate of defunding police, but I definitely say no more funding should go into encouraging a militarized mentality.
Another interesting aspect of Huntsville’s inappropriate and potentially illegal partnership with WellStone is that it further serves to stigmatize mentally ill people. It reminds me of mainstream media outlets who embrace programs to destigmatize mental illness and then start talking about taking guns away from crazy people. The empirical evidence shows the reality that mentally ill people are no more likely to commit violent crimes. One recent report gets around that key fact by saying crazy people are more likely to have “encounters” with law-enforcement. Obviously, some cultural group psychosis paradigms are in need of a shift. The message should read – quit badgering “mentally ill” people.
The bottom line is that the Huntsville / WellStone “partnership” will only make matters worse by caramelizing the real problems. And worse yet, the WellStone “partnership” sets the stage for more human rights violations and constitutional erosion.
©2021 – Jim Casey
