The city of Los Angeles has finally unveiled its brand new “Unarmed Response Program” to provide a kinder, gentler law enforcement squad in the city, reported the Epoch Times reported.
Los Angeles officials have recruited an army of therapists to send unarmed at criminals and the homeless in the hopes that they will curb violent police confrontations. The teams will deal primarily with the 41,000 homeless in the city of Los Angeles alone, and the 66,000 total in the county.
The Crisis and Incident Response through Community-Led Engagement (CIRCLE) program will predictably begin trial runs in the Venice and Hollywood neighborhoods, and will run through June of 2022. City officials chose the two areas because of the concentration of homeless people.
The city will apparently contract 48 outreach workers through a company fittingly called Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit from San Francisco which purports to address mental illness and drug addiction by making cities more open to those activities.
Los Angeles will reportedly spend a total of $30 million countywide and $2.2 million in the city for the six-month program.
Outreach workers in CIRCLE will not be trained in any law enforcement tactics for fear of causing violence.
Infamous Los Angeles BLM supporter, lockdown tyrant Mayor Eric Garcetti supported the idea last month, arguing that police are often too mean to criminals.
“There’s a lot of support around the idea of removing police officers from nonviolent response,” he said, “and Los Angeles is harnessing that energy to create a model that strengthens the human bonds that are essential to public safety and seeks to help, not punish, our most vulnerable Angelenos.”
“We are never going to arrest our way out of this crisis,” he added.
Some local police officers disagreed with Garcetti, arguing that most on the police force have extensive experience with the homeless, and even know many of them by name.
Deon Joseph, Law Enforcement Consultant and 25-year veteran of the LAPD emphasized the dangers of approaching the drug-addicted without proper tactical training.
“No matter how much training you have, there’s always the potential for it to go sideways
because there are other variables involved,” Joseph said.
“It’s really a problem when it’s narcotics related,” he said, “when they’re dual diagnosed, because now when they’re in crisis, it becomes more of a challenge, because now you have a chemical buffer between you and the person in crisis, which is my only concern for this new movement.”
