alt Hacker News> Since 911’s inception in 1968, and even before, we have always defaulted to the police for things that really have nothing to do with crime.
I'm not sure why that should be surprising. For example, I'd expect the highway patrol to show up first at an accident. Maybe an ambulance or the fire department would be there too.
Yeah I'm not sure the alternative would be better. You will always have calls that don't fit neatly into the "crime" "fire" or "injury" buckets. Of the three of those whose time I would want to take up dealing with something in the margins it makes complete sense for it to be a police officer, if for no other reason than there are a lot more of them than there are paramedics or [professional] firefighters in most areas. Downstream of that the potential negatives of having 1-2 paramedics dealing with nonsense and unavailable for other calls seem much higher than the negatives of having 1-2 cops unavailable for some period of time.