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Commentary By Charles Fain Lehman

Social Workers Won’t Replace Police Anytime Soon

Public Safety Policing, Crime Control

Violence, even from the mentally ill, demands a serious response.

Thomas Dee and Jaymes Pyne promise more than they can deliver in “How to Get Cops Out of the Mental-Health Business” (Cross Country, July 9). They studied a Denver program that sends mental-health specialists to some calls instead of cops. Minor crimes fell in areas with responders versus those without. But that, the authors admit, may be because the responders didn’t report the crimes. And the effect persisted when the responders were off duty—maybe because they were very effective, but also maybe because they had no effect.

Continue reading the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)

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Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Follow him on Twitter here.

This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal