Now, as to the case of the mentally ill who come to the attention of the police, it's a slightly different story: When their behavior disrupts society's peaceful repose, we immediately dispatch a highly trained mental health care professional with a PhD in psychology and years of experience in treating the mentally ill. He/She is accompanied by a team of healtchare professionals, a pharmacist ready with medication if needed, and a social worker to find the appropriate setting for the individual in his/her time of need. 24/7/365 these folks are standing by ready to be launched out into the dark to fix...er...no. No. No, that's not what we do.
Sorry, I confused reality with something that made sense. I'll try to keep that from happening again.
No, we send a couple of 26 year-olds with associates degrees and limited experience in dealing with the mentally ill, and almost no training in diagnosing or treating them. They look around and see no psychologist, pharmacist or social worker. What tools did we give them to fix the problem? A gun, a metal baton, a set of handcuffs and a cage in the backseat of their car. Are they specialists in dealing with sick individuals? No, but they have tons of experience in confronting violent, combative, intoxicated and uncooperative people, and just oodles of experience in applying physical force to those same people who say "NO!" to requests for cooperation and compliance. Cops are by training, nature and experience, perfectly suited for turning, "No" into "Yessss ow, ow, Okay, okay, I quit! Please stop! I said yes dammit! Yes!"
Is it any wonder that hardly a year passes around here in which a mentally disturbed person doesn't die during a confrontation with the police?
Society is sending a message. It doesn't want the mentally ill in institutions, and prefers them out in the population where they all live happy productive lives while their illness is controlled by medication and therapy. Except that is not what always happens. They stop taking their medications, they can't afford them, they self-medicate with booze or drugs, etc.
Now, if the person's behavior rises to the level where they are demonstrably a danger to themselves or another, then they can be involuntarily committed to a mental health care facility. If you can convince a magistrate with your articulation of the facts. And if there is space available. Then of course the hold is only for 24-hours at the most, and 90% of the time they are released back into the same environment from which they failed.
And the people who are having less serious problems, are homeless, or are in situations that are not healthy? Well, the cops all have a nice list of names and phone numbers of shelters intended to help those folks. Except, they're already full and refuse to take any newcomers, "maybe next month" is the best you get. Unless a caring family member will take the person in, the only other alternative is to arrest them for one of the offenses designed to keep Bob the Bum at bay. But you help with one hand by getting them off the street and simultaneously hurt them by putting them into the giant uncaring criminal justice system. If there was some real help available to them in jail that might make it worth it, but that is so seldom the case. So, they get told "stay off the street" and are left to do their thing until the police get called again. It follows the philosophy of, "if you can't make it better, be damn sure you don't do something that makes it worse."
So, society sends the wrong people out to do the job and equips and trains them for near certain failure, and then provides them with almost no viable alternatives. Society doesn't want to help these people, it just wants to keep them out of too much mischief. Stay out of the way of the working folks all you crazy people.