Their claim, as I've interpreted it, is that their lived experiences have lead them to believe any situation must be treated with caution because they never know what to expect. That is simply not the same as presuming that every mentally ill person is carrying a firearm and is violent.
As I see it, that's just common sense. If you get a call from a woman telling you she's fallen down and is hurt, how likely is it that EMTs are met at the door by a drunk man who claims nothing is wrong? What first appeared to be a simple medical situation may actually be a case of domestic violence. Neither the dispatcher nor the EMT can know this before anybody arrives on the scene, so whoever gets there first needs to be cognizant of all possibilities. Recognizing the possibility that somebody might be violent is not the same as believing they will be.
> As I see it, that's just common sense. If you get a call from a woman telling you she's fallen down and is hurt, how likely is it that EMTs are met at the door by a drunk man who claims nothing is wrong
This is
1. Exceedingly unlikely
2. A situation where escalating might be warranted, but the person who knocks on the door isn't in imminent danger.
3. You wouldn't bring a police officer to this call, but as you've so clearly pointed out, there's a chance it could turn violent. The logical conclusion here would be that police should respond to all medical emergencies, but they don't for reasons that become clear if you look into the history of how separate medical emergency response came to be.
