larrymoencurly

How much does the average police officer know about dealing with the unarmed mentally disturbed, compared to in the past?

Also do you tell officers that telling somebody "calm down" never works?

TL;DR: They met Jesus but walked away from Him.

I had a friend who wanted to wanted to become a cop, and my ex-cop father thought he'd be good at it because he was a good talker and mature for his age, but he quit the academy because he thought instructors put too much emphasis on us vs. them. Years later, officers who graduated from the academy around then apparently averaged unusually high rates of disciplinary actions and complaints for brutality. Ironically the US Army's own police academy has long put emphasis on the social worker aspects.

I live in Aus and don't really have a grasp on where to get any particular training in mental health on the side.

Maybe ask a psychiatric nurse about training resources. There have been a couple of situations in the US where an off-duty psychiatric nurse just happened to be in the area when somebody had a gun or fired shots, and the nurse simply told the gunman to hand over the weapon, and they did.

Well US military personnel don't have the same rights as civilians.

But UCMJ means military police routinely informed arrestees of their rights even decades before the Supreme Court handed down the Miranda decision that required civilian police to do the same.

but the problem with the US military is that mental illness is a big no no. If you tell your commander or medical staff that you're depressed you'll be getting a recommendation to chapter out

During confrontations with the police? That's the issue here when it comes to mental illness. Also not everybody arrested by MPs, SPs, APs is military; many are dependents. And then there's the matter of military occupations, like postwar Europe and Japan, where a lot of social work was involved, not only with civilians but also with local police.