In terms of saving the effort and of police not having to do tasks that could be done by others—we talk about mental health workers and so on—in some communities there are designated traffic police officers who are only allowed to give tickets, etc. This leads us to question in some way what the role of the police officer is. If you have a designated quasi-police officer giving out traffic tickets, if you have mental health workers responding to calls where somebody is in crisis, at some point one must wonder whether the police officer's role is to be more an investigative role, a detective role, and by this I mean involving upgrading of skills to deal with the more complex problems we have today. Is this where we're heading?
It seems to me that one of the benefits of having a police officer respond to something, from a citizen's point of view, is the idea that if force is required that person can take care of the situation.