It's pretty appropriate for them to act like people who want to help the community though, and homeless are still part of the community.

Their bosses (the voters) raise hell at the politicians to push the homeless out of sight. If police don’t do that, the local politicians will have to replace the police, or else the voters will replace the politician.

I can see what you are saying, you are probably right about the cause and effect. But I think you've unfairly shifted the blame to voters. Voters don't know how to handle a societal problem as big and as endemic as a growing homeless population, that's why we put our trust in politicians, councils and governors. Voters are just signalling a desire for a clean and safe neighborhood, and suppose even that they don't care how it's done, it's still the city and police force's responsibility to figure out a way to do it humanely and in a way that helps solve the issue, not sweep it into another neighborhood.

I want to point out that I am not anti-police, I'm just lamenting what seems to be a lack of empathy and perhaps even a lack of bravery for someone in the chain to change the approach. It's by no means an easy problem to solve, I don't envy those in charge.

> Voters are just signalling a desire for a clean and safe neighborhood, and suppose even that they don't care how it's done, it's still the city and police force's responsibility to figure out a way to do it humanely and in a way that helps solve the issue, not sweep it into another neighborhood.

I’m not willing to give voters the benefit of the doubt. We have a pretty well educated population that consistently goes to the polls and votes for the person that promises the lowest taxes. We can all say we want to support our fellow citizens all we want, but I have yet to see any action on that front.

> I’m not willing to give voters the benefit of the doubt. We have a pretty well educated population that consistently goes to the polls and votes for the person that promises the lowest taxes.

No, we don't. Not even after adding in the benefit of the fact that the people who run on that platform also benefit from structural advantages in all of the elected parts of the federal government.

> Voters don't know how to handle a societal problem as big and as endemic as a growing homeless population,

Ignorance of matters for which one is responsible is a curable condition, not an excuse.

> that's why we put our trust in politicians

Putting trust in the particular politicians voters have chosen to put their trust in is exactly why blaming voters is not an unfair shift of blame.

> Ignorance of matters for which one is responsible is a curable condition, not an excuse.

We can't be experts on every issue a council is currently responsible for. That's why we have a council in the first place, so they can be, or hire, the experts.

> Putting trust in the particular politicians voters have chosen to put their trust in is exactly why blaming voters is not an unfair shift of blame.

Yet every year we have just a handful of candidates, we pick the ones who advocate for our particular interests, and hope for the best on all the issues, because there is no way of knowing how the specifics are going to play out. We hope for good journalism to let us know of the particularly heinous issues, and then we do our best to vote correctly again next year.

> Yet every year we have just a handful of candidates

You must have very large hands, unless you are only talking about major party nominees (i.e., winners of the first round of voting from the two biggest parties.) There's a reasonable basis, arguably at least, for limiting consideration to major party candidates, but the nomination process is part of the selection process and the candidates that enter that process, not just the ones that win it, are part of the choice set. If one ignores the process until after most of the critical decisions are made, the remaining choices are quite limited, but that is itself a choice.

Homelessness doesn't equate with mental health. It closer equates to poverty or bad situations. Lots of folks are mentally ill and have housing - even severe mental illness. Lots of folks aren't really mentally ill, but lack housing. Of course, this is a bad circle since the trauma of being homeless can cause mental illness.

And yes, it is completely appropriate for society to expect police to behave as part of the mental health care system. Police are often someone's first contact for some mental illness: Simply being able to talk to someone without shooting them and getting them to emergency mental health services should completely be within their grasp. We can provide training for this.

It isn't like we are expecting comprehensive treatment from them. It is more like expecting a cop to be able to perform emergency first aid for people until an ambulance arrives.

In my experience, the strategy in the entirety of the US is to use the police to herd the homeless/mentally ill/drug abusers into the poorest areas, out of sight and mind of most middle and upper class people.

However, recently as their numbers grow, and they start becoming more and more visible, it's not as sustainable of a policy as before. I know that homelessness doesn't equal mentally ill or drug addict, but my point is that using the police as a long term tool to keep the homeless out of sight is not tenable. The police should be capable of first aid and handling initial interactions, but I don't think they should be tasked with this repetitive herding behavior. It has to be psychologically taxing for them to have to deal with people who they know they will just have to push along the next day or week.