Senator Inhofe Wants To Mental Health Training For Police

In a wild round-we-go type story, Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe seems to be leading a continued charge to see that every police officer be trained to deal with mental health issues in the line of their public service. His announcement came just a week after a man who announced he had mental health issues in OKC was shot and killed by responding police. It's not clear who's original idea this was, but Inhofe is pressing for $7.5million to be available to Oklahoma police departments to make this happen.

Here's the round-we-go portion... If you look up the bill Inhofe is talking about, the Law Enforcement Training for Mental Health Crisis Response Act of 2021, it's not exactly his idea or his bill. I mean, sure, he's planning on introducing it to the Senate, but if you google it, It's more or less something from a past congress that he's now giving his weight and influence to. It was actually an unpopular representative, Kendra Horn, that introduced this way back in 2019, but after this last crazy year of everything that has happened, it's now at the forefront even though she's since been voted out of her office.

Personally, it wasn't a bad idea then and it's not a bad idea now. It just unfortunately got caught up in the party lines because one side said it couldn't be good because the other side came up with it... That's the problem with politics to either side of the moderate center. It's all he said/she said. Even if you don't agree, this could be a tremendous tool for our boys in blue have at their disposal to deescalate a situation that might otherwise end in another needless tragedy.