You're talking about a situation that is almost always going to be accompanied by jail time. Even under this program, the top 2-4% of sex offenders are going to go through the justice system and see jail time. Look at the stuff you're citing (emphasis mine):

> This type of law grants Minnesota courts the ability to deem someone an ongoing threat

> here are tens of thousands of serious sex offenders who, after serving their prison terms, are civilly committed

If anything, this seems to lend credence to the idea that having more police officers is not a deterrent for involuntary commitment. Literally all of these people were committed after being arrested and going through the justice system.

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Add to that the fact that you're talking about a relatively tiny proportion of a very specific crime. Doesn't mean that it's not a problem, but as a point of comparison, there are currently ~200,000 people in the US serving lifetime sentences in prison.

So I still don't see how I'm expected to treat those numbers like they're the same. Of course treatment facilities can be problematic, but I'm not seeing numbers that make me think they're a worse problem than our current incarceration system.

And I especially don't see how the current initiative is going to affect the numbers you're talking about. Is Denver planning to stop prosecuting sex offenders? Why does the first responder being a mental health professional or a police officer matter in that instance? I mean, on both sides here it's wild to be talking about the top 2-4% of sex offenders or prison life sentences in regards to a program that is bragging in press releases about how they handled a low-level trespassing case. You're looking at a different category of crime than this program is designed to address.