A rape investigation should be done by a social worker? Are they trained criminal investigators? Is a social worker familiar with the rules of criminal evidence? The job of the police is to investigate crimes and present evidence to the DA.

For welfare checks or mental illness incidents, then of course a social worker or analogue could be a better choice. For investigating criminal acts, that’s specifically what police do.

If someone calls in a rape, what happens when the suspect is still there? Rape is a violent crime and showing up with a gun is absolutely appropriate. It’s ridiculous to suggest violent crimes should be investigated by people who aren’t trained in criminal investigation nor trained to deal with violent and dangerous suspects. Is the social worker going to carry handcuffs? Are they going to be trained in apprehending suspects? If so, then that means the social worker is now a cop.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water here.

It would be perfectly possible to have people who are trained to preserve evidence who are not also traditional police. E.g. a medical examiner of some kind. You want someone to work with traumatized victims delicately, and a uniformed cop with a sidearm is not the ideal presence in that case. I don't want to get into suspect present/absent/whatever; but this type of crime isn't necessarily done by a random stranger in every case.

This hypothetical trained medical examiner won't be wearing a uniform? Seems like a uniform might be a good idea.

As to a sidearm – if I'd just been raped, someone showing up to protect me with a sidearm sounds like just the ticket.

Not sure what you are saying about a suspect not being a random stranger, that doesn't seem particularly relevant to whether or not the suspect is still there.

The baby’s already been tossed my friend.

The police actually have a terrible record when it comes to handling the crime of rape.

They downplay it, deprioritize it, etc. Read about the massive backlog of rape kits.

Literally - rape crimes that are reported to the police, and that they deprioritize or ignore.

https://www.rainn.org/articles/addressing-rape-kit-backlog

I'd love to hear from the folks who downvoted this, so I could improve this comment. Because there's a lot of empirical evidence that police departments (and our court system, to be fair - it's a social issue) historically have not handled rape cases well.

So, I'm all for reasonable discussion and receiving feedback about what was unclear or counterproductive in what I said.

But, I encourage future readers to take silence as a sign that people really didn't have any facts or logic to back up their side of the argument ; ).

Even though that might be a bit unfair, since it's not as if everyone is on here all the time.

But I think it's important for technologists - scientists, engineers, etc - to embrace their role in society at large and the power we have.

And part of that involves discussing social issues, as frustrating as some of us might find discussing these non-quantifiable fields.

Hey, it can't be worse than having to talk about the latest hot new addition to the JS ecosystem ;)

I agree for the mental health checks that there should be someone trained in mental health present, but you also need police present just in case the mentally ill person because combative, funding shouldn't be reduced, perhaps it should be increased to train police in handling the mentally ill or the police force should have professionals on the clock.