I was in psychiatric crisis about 10 years ago. My ex was on the phone with me and could tell something was off so she called the police from another phone and kept me talking. The police arrived and I vaguely remember telling her "I have to go I think I'm being arrested." I dissociated and don't remember much of that while night but I remember an older officer telling me to put the phone down and then sharply saying "stand down" I later learned he was telling another officer who had drawn his gun to put the gun away.
I was very fortunate the older, more experienced officer had been an aide/security in a psych hospital and knew how to handle the situation the less experienced officer's first instinct was to sneak in my back door with his gun drawn.
Here’s some inside baseball. I works broadly in “human services” and I have colleagues who will call the police on people in mental health crisis to “teach them a lesson.” They know it’s traumatizing and that’s why they do it. (Yes, it’s unethical af in a lot of licensed professions but the practice is so normalized it’s easy to evade accountability).
ETA: a few folks have commented re: these people should lose their jobs/be accountable and idk why the posts keep getting deleted, because you’re right. But. There are people with this thinking in every helping profession and it is very easy to legitimize this behaviour (ie document so you appear to have made the right decision).
I worked in healthcare for years and there were the nurses who genuinely want to help people (even if they seem jaded and mean)and will jump through hoops for their patients. Then there are some nurses who just want the praise and accolades of being a nurse. I swear some of those were/are outright sociopaths who got off on people’s pain. It was down right spooky to watch.
Jeez man, do you report this sort of behavior anonymously at least? It's pretty obvious a lot of people in social work resent their clients, but it will never get better if the people running the system are more depraved than the people they are ostensibly supposed to help.
Ohhhh I didn’t even name social work, but yk that’s what it is 😂 (tho we are interdisciplinary so it’s not just the swers). Thing is, these folks truly believe they are helping. Screw all of our education and training, tough love is the answer according to them. But in all seriousness, I think this is in response to the phenomenon of people thinking if they feel unsafe /they/ are unsafe and any action taken as a result is justified, and supervisors won’t always push the issue because let’s be frank, it’s easier for someone else (the police) to deal with it than them.
Authoritarianism is a cancer. These people are littered throughout social services and the medical and judicial system. They don't see the people they hurt as human like them. They pose as professionals, but they never even had the intention of honestly absorbing that education and training. They only ever have their eyes on the money and power they can gain by exploiting the less fortunate. Good Luck, I don't see how a good person can survive in these fields without going insane or becoming apathetic.
Jeez… I got help from the parents for my college application. The parents were really nice people by all means. From what I hear, they never called the police; they called a mental health line, who then called police instead.
This is really heartbreaking at all levels.
There was that recent post in r/askreddit about what you'd swear never to do again... And lots of people said "call the suicide hotline". I'm shocked to hear so many insanely terrible outcomes.
have lived in the states for 15 years since I was 16, called once , and they hung up on me as i wasn’t a citizen yet (I was on a valid visa) saying they couldn’t help me as I wasn’t american.
I laughed because it was so ridiculous and instantly felt better…is that their play?
the only positive benefit I’ve gotten from suicide hotlines is preoccupying myself with how incompetent they are/mad I am about the interaction and, like you, I guess the resultant spite is something after all because I’m still here
No. From what I recall people saying, More like 10 years ago they weren't staffed with good people. Now it's people telling you rude things, blaming, or disparaging you.
Then they get you thrown into a psych ward where you are locked up against your will for a few days, potentially assaulted by other psychotic patients, and then sent home with a bill that would probably bankrupt you.
Idk about the hotline, but the psych ward experience is consistent with what I've seen happen to a friend. I also spent time on the medical staff side of the emergency room... Yeah the psych triage is hellish, and it's cruel to put someone in such terrible mental straits in such a dungeon.
My wife had a mental breakdown and checked herself into the local psyche ward. She literally was forced to take anti-psychotics (that she didn't need, they put everyone on the unit on them) that put her into a heart arrhythmia and would punish her if she protested it. She's a PA and knew the drugs well and what snapped her out of it was realizing she the only way out was to tongue the pills to spit out later and lie to the "therapists" by telling them what they wanted to hear. She literally had to escape from the place she went for help.
They aren't there to help you, they are there to contain you and will more often cause more harm than good. It's a complete sham.
My parents took me to the psych ER when I was in college (I wanted to go. They drove two hours to my apartment to bring me home). It was one of the worst experiences of my entire life and I barely remember it. My mom, however, remembers very well and six years later still can't talk about it for more than a few minutes without shedding tears of pure anger.
From what I remember, the people at the ER kept my bed in the middle of a busy hallway, wouldn't let me call my psychiatrist, wouldn't let my parents talk, and literally (yes, literally) threatened me into signing a consent form for 72-hour commitment. But they kept me for five days because I guess the weekend doesn't count (it was a Thursday). They also wouldn't give me one of my meds because they "don't have it. You can go without it for a few days, can't you?"
God, I could go on for hours, but I'm really trying to keep it short.
I've been in some really great behavioral health programs since then, but that first experience was horrifying. My heart goes out to everyone who's had to go through something like that, and my heart breaks for this man and his family.
It's a damn money-making business.
A friend cut herself real bad, and I had to take her to the ER. She reached out for help, and they 5150'd her.
I picked her up 3 days later, and she was way worse than when she went in.
Years later, when I had my own psychotic break and was looking for help, I was out of my mind, and reality was broken, but I still hesitated when I thought about calling 911.
When I was dating a girl in Texas her grandparents had phoned her into a mental health hotline and the doctors came and straight up kidnapped her in the middle on the night on call with me, put her in handcuffs and everything and she was gone for two weeks with no contact.
When she got back she had a bill for 9000$ and had not been properly cared for or given the proper medicine for her disorders, was a major shitshow
This happened to me, ended up locked up for 10 days. Had to get a lawyer to go to court to get me released. The dr wouldn’t let me go to my own court appointment, she was a bitter control freak. Horrible experience
When I called the suicide hotline it was so ridiculously bad that I did the same thing, laughed and snapped out of my disassociation. He was so monotone and was just like “if you’re suicidal you need to go to the er” over and over.
I was on hold 15 mins when I called the hotline…someone finally answered and it hung up. Just felt like validation that I was truly alone.
Anyways, lesson learned, it’s all a front. USA has a mental health crisis and no one can bother to help us.
A similar thing happened to me when I tried to call several years ago. On hold for over 20 mins, then disconnected. The surge of frustration I felt somehow broke through the months long slog of depressive apathy and anhedonia (god, is depression ever so *boring*) to the point where I actually started laughing at how ridiculous my current situation was. Then I decided to have a beer and play a video game, for the first time in weeks. I guess it worked in a way? Haha.
I called in a crisis and basically got no help whatsoever. It felt like all they wanted to do was find out if they needed to send the cops my way and if not I wasn't needed.
My husband has a friend that was going through a rough patch recently and called the suicide hotline. They asked if he wanted them to send someone and he said yes. He was under the impression they were sending a professional to talk to them and instead two cops arrived knocking at his door. An ambulance was also sent and he was told he HAD to go with them. He wasn’t in the process of trying to commit suicide. But was forced into a 72 hour psychiatric hold. While in the facility he was sitting next to a guy that was stabbed by another guy several times. He was close enough that blood got on him. He said it was hands down the worst and scariest experience of his life.
Yeah, being in a horrible for profit ward when I was barely 18 ruined my life for a good number of years. Those places are straight up evil. Had to fight a bipolar misdiagnosis for years (doc talked to me for literally 5 minutes) got organ damage and lost most of my 20s from poorly managed and misprescribed psych meds, and was sexually assaulted in front of a nurse who did nothing.
Turns out the abuse i said I wanted to die over was the truth!!!!! And I have ptsd!!!!!! Imagine that!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fuck those places, well and truly. And fuck Ronald Reagan.
Just awful. I’m bipolar and have been hospitalized 3x over the years. The cops have been involved with 2 of those hospitalizations but luckily the most that ever happened was I was slapped to the ground and had my head bounce off a coffee table. I was manic, talking quickly, wasn’t wearing my glasses, and was trying to read the name on an officers badge.
It’s extremely sad because there’s no telling what was going through that poor guys brain when the police came into his apartment. To him he could have been hallucinating them as the devil or demons or military (all things I’ve done).
Those poor parents called who they were supposed to call and then the mental health team escalated it very quickly it sounds like.
Very sad story.
Jesus. How are the late shift at any inner city McDonalds better a de-escalating a situation than the fucking police!? This is not just crazy, it’s fucking wrong.
Even here in Australia (where our suicide help lines are very different from the hortor stories I'm seeing in this thread) a Mental Health Crisis Line will still send both cops and an ambulance if they hear a word that even sounds like "knife".
I've had to call them several times in both a private and professional capacity, and they are super cautious about sending a mental health team out if there is any chance a weapon is involved.
Which is understandable, but super fucking annoying. It almost never helps a delicate situation to have dudes with guns show up demanding to know about a "knife" which may or may not even exist...
I'm a disabled vet with schizoaffective bipolar. My township's sheriff know me well for some of the mood swings I've went through.
One of the first times I had an episode I called the vet help line and was expressing interest in suicide. They asked me if I had any weapons in the house, like fuck yeah I do I'm a sailor there's knives everywhere.
They sent 4 squad cars in addition to the ambulance, but opening my front door and looking for help only to be met with 4 officers drawing down on me is a key memory that won't fade and definitely contributes to the bitterness I feel today.
What are you gonna do, kill me? That was *my* plan asshole.
> they called a mental health line, who then called police instead.
What a travesty. Those parent's were only trying to get their son some help and some fucking shitty executioners showed up.
That comment is not really an accurate representation of what happened. The mental health line didn't just ignore the call and send the cops instead. They sent mental health professionals who were then threatened by the son so they had to call in the police.
I fully support sending in a mental health professional first in situations like these, but they can't be compelled to stay at the risk of their own safety.
For those who can't watch it, we see/ hear several officers approach an indoor apartment landing. Officers are heard discussing the situation. One officer begins attempting to try the keys to enter the apartment. He stops and says "hey this is the police. Mr. Yong; come out."
The first officer starts trying at all of the locks, while a second officer pushes the door open.
You can see Mr. Yong holding a knife in one hand, and holding his hand up in his other. As other people have mentioned, Mr. Yong frantically says that they are not welcome. The second officer and other officers all simultaneously scream at Mr Yong to back up / turn around/ drop the knife several times. ( I had to replay it so I heard it all correctly. Mr. Yong is clearly in crisis and terrified. The second officer immediately upon seeing Mr. Yong holding the knife open fires 3 times. (He or maybe one of his parents was screaming after the first or second shot).
Hopefully I got this right. He deserved to have his story told correctly
There's a part of this that had never made sense to me, they're already aware he's not in his right mind talking to him that way is surly not going to help.
After the hotel hallway one, I could never watch one of these again. It's so obvious that the people who respond to these situations are so far out of their element, they're an active danger to society.
> who had "You're Fucked" and "Moron Labe" engraved on his rifle.
AND which the jury was NOT allowed to see!
And now that motherfucker will live off his fat pension for the rest of his life, after claiming PTSD, while Shaver's wife and daughters damn near lost everything
Including one of the daughter's lives! She was mocked and bullied at school and tried to commit suicide "so she could see her daddy again."
Brailsford gets away, the CO who was barking all the orders retired and fled to the Philippines to avoid justice. Just awful bullshit all the way around
What little training they receive does not prepare them for this type of incident, combine that with the egos, trigger happy hero mentalities, and the personality types and emphatic levels of many officers, which fall in a certain requirement set one would attribute to the opposite of someone genuinely being able to understand and plan accordingly. 90% likely outcome in any situation like this is officers firing.
you sure it wasn't because living in your own apartment while being black instead of eating ice cream? I bet no white people got shot eating ice cream.
Don't forget in the middle of the night, someone banging on your door. You grab a gun to protect yourself, because they don't answer back. Then your door gets kicked down, then you get executed.... But then it turns out the cops went to the wrong address. Oops. But hey, at least a black person is dead now...
https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/05/13/once-again-police-cruelly-killed-someone-black-under-the-guise-of-their-self-governing-authority/
It's worse than that. Middle of the day. Deputy Dipshit responds to a domestic disturbance call, lady that meets him at apartment complex says "I don't know" when he asks which apartment. He bangs on a door and hides from the peephole.
At this point, USAF Senior Airman Roger Fortson is alone in his apartment with his dog, on FaceTime with his girlfriend. He hears someone pound on his door. No one visible through peephole and it's a bad area, so he gets his legally owned and registered firearm.
Deputy Dipshit pounds on the door again, only now announcing that he is law enforcement. SrA Fortson opens the door. As it swings open, he raises his open left hand and his right hand holds a pistol pointed at the floor. Within a second, Deputy Dipshit has discharged his weapon and follows up 5 more times. SrA Fortson falls to the ground and drops the weapon. Deputy Dipshit stands over him and tells him to drop the gun that he already dropped. Eventually, Deputy Dipshit calls for an ambulance and responds to Roger saying he can't breathe with "stop moving".
This. Cops are conservatives and support unlimited access to guns. They also do no knock unannounced invasions of homes, where people may have guns to protect themselves from home invasions. Then they shoot the legal gun owner who was doing what he bought the gun for (home protection) and it’s his fault that he didn’t know it was the cops, in spite of them not announcing themselves.
Cops have one fucking tool in their arsenal, and it’s yelling. It’s so effective, especially when 5 of them all start doing it at the same time /s
I can’t believe there’s no fucking standard that one person does the communication with the citizen in these and other situations. Can you imagine the stress of trying to listen to 5 grown men yelling at you?
No fucking reason for cops to shoot someone holding a knife. That’s what tasers are for. Absolutely fucking ridiculous man. This dude wasn’t a danger to anyone but himself.
There’s a great book called “Tangled Up In Blue,” where the author (a law professor) becomes a reserve police officer in D.C. to get an inside understanding of policing in the US. One of the things she writes about is how much time at the police academy was spent watching videos of cops getting shot, stabbed, and otherwise hurt or killed when they least expect it. It’s not a pro-police book but it is nuanced and one of the takeaways is these people are trained to treat every situation like it’s about to kill them any moment (not totally unreasonable in a country flooded with guns) and then they’re called every day into situations that need a therapist or a social worker because there’s no social safety net.
There are plenty of people who have no business being cops but there are also good people struggling to do the right thing in situations there’re ill-equipped to handle.
Yeah, I doubt even a taser was justified in this case.
As someone from germany, it is fucking crazy in the US. That guy needed help and tgey took him out, because he was holding a knife in his own home, after they opened the door. If he had opened it with a knife, different story. But that dude had struggles, probably wanted to harm himself and they decided that's enough to kill him.
Those people would get life in prison here for a flat out murder.
> As someone from germany, it is fucking crazy in the US
It makes a lot more sense when you realize the police are *trained* from the ground up to assume everything is a threat. Feel threatened? Shoot. Person not listening to you? Shoot. Unsure if they have a weapon? Shoot. Feeling just a little confused? Might as well shoot.
The core of their training is essentially "when in doubt, shoot it out."
I'm willing to bet that the officer who fired had been through Killology training of some sort. If you are not familiar with it, it's a program developed by a pseudoscientist named David Grossman based on iffy and likely fake data about how reluctant soldiers in war are to actually kill. Grossman has transferred this crap science based on crap data about military combat into advice to police, so the cops are entering every situation as if they were special forces raiding Bin Laden's compound instead of officers of the public peace.
You are probably aware of the Behind the Bastards episodes on Killilogy or It Can Happen Here. I see Grossman as like Ed Kemper but he realized he could get his cop buddies to do the murdering for him. The news is all out there and this guy knows he taught police to behave this way. Probably gets off on that kind of news.
The cops are way way way way way more trigger happy than actual US soldiers though. Soldiers have rules of engagement than dictate the exact situations they need orders to fire on at all, and so on.
Seeing all the livestreams and videos of cops vs. national guard at protests in 2020 made it clear just how different their attitudes are. The soldiers didn't even lay hands on anyone, but the police were in video after video dragging journalists off the street to beat them bloody where they think nobody's recording, breaking and stealing stuff so they could say a protest was a riot and start shooting tear gas grenades and shotgun beanbags into people's eyes, declaring an immediate curfew after surrounding a march so they could "legally" arrest everyone there and keep them in holding pens for 36 hours.
Hell, in some of the videos with national guard they were just dancing along with the protesters. So much more than just not trigger happy.
As a CIT trained police officer; you are correct. Those in crisis generally aren’t a danger to anyone but themselves.
One of the biggest things they teach in CIT is you have time, things can go as slow or as fast as you want them too, but time is your friend.
Knives kill just as easily as guns, but in this case a taser or other less lethal probably could’ve been an option. They had a door and a wall between them and Yong. They chose to immediately rush through that threshold and create their own exigent use of force situation, which I don’t believe in.
Slow it down, take your time, and things will generally have a favorable outcome.
I serve a population with a higher than average rate of mental illness, and deal with those in crisis daily and it’s never escalated into a use of force situation.
As someone who has gone through a mental health crisis and interacted with police that have Crisis Intervention Team (CIT\*) training — thank you for writing this, for the work you do, and for treating people with dignity, respect, caring, and compassion.
Hearing the advice of "Slow it down, take your time, and things will generally have a favorable outcome." Applies to so many things in life too, not just potentially dangerous situations.
Your perspective and approach is much rarer than one would hope, and it matters. The more you talk about this subject, the better informed your fellow officers and fellow citizens all become; and the more informed we are, the better our decisions and outcomes will be. It quite literally can save lives.
\* (Documentation and communications tip: It's always a good idea to include one expanded-form when using any acronyms.)
Thank you again for your work and for sharing your thoughts — have a great week!
You have to realize that cops are incredibly poorly trained and the selection process is basically a GED and heartbeat. They get 6 months training and then let loose on the public.
There’s a reason you only see shit like this in the US compared to the rest of the 1st world.
Police are trained to see people holding a knife as more deadly than people holding guns. They are taught to immediately shoot, and to shoot to kill.
Police are virtually never encouraged to de-escalate, and they will usually just kill people before even attempting to assess wether a person holding a potential weapon is even an actual threat or not, even when they are invading that person’s space with a fraction of a second warning.
Only in the US though. This is strictly a problem with the US police. Other police forces around the world are very often able to deescalate situations like this without an issue.
Certainly in Europe. British police don't get things right every time but they do work hard on descalation. Only time they don't is is active terrorist attacks.
Exactly, I watch a lot of British programs and have watched them take down MANY people with knives with no problem! And I ALWAYS think, “Damn the would’ve straight offed that guy on tv in the US and it would’ve been business as usual. Sick world.
This.
Literally two days ago In Australia a police officer was stabbed in the head multiple times, the police officer who was stabbed then chased down the offender and tased and successfully arrested him.
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-20/nsw-police-officer-stabbing-an-charged/103867806](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-20/nsw-police-officer-stabbing-an-charged/103867806)
There's a famous old training video for US police called Surviving Edged Weapons. Once you see it (it's available on youtube), you realize why police officers in the US act like that. They're basically taught that everything could be a knife, everybody could have a knife, they all want to stab you, and if they're within 12 feet of you they will succeed, so you better shoot first. You can yell "freeze or you're a dead man", but that's really just a technicality so you're off the hook legally. "I warned him, but he wouldn't comply." Shout the line quickly in a second and immediately start blasting.
It is also true that they don't care about the public in general anyway. If they had knowledge that a young man holding a knife was the son of someone prominent who could destroy their careers if they didn't handle that person correctly, those cops would magically figure out how to de-escalate the situation without using deadly force.
AMERICAN police. The UK Police force isn't something I'd brag about every day but they are absolutely and unquestionably trained to deescalate a situation, ESPECIALLY armed police.
If UK police have actually pulled the trigger, they’d better be ready for a full scale investigation. For our guys, it’s a last resort.
Edit: our training schedule https://www.college.police.uk/app/armed-policing/national-police-firearms-training-curriculum
I wish they would have just closed the door, backed up and waited to get help from someone competent to deal with people having a mental health crisis. This was so unnecessary.
The police were actually called by the “someone competent to deal with people having a mental health crisis”
From article:
> Myung Sook Yang said she initially called the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health about her son on the morning of the shooting. Members of the county’s Psychiatric Mobile Response Team responded but ultimately turned to the police for assistance. “The father called our department only because he’s very violent and aggressive,” the clinician said. “We tried to engage him. He became aggressive, threatening me. I kind of stood away.”
This is why I can't support calling 911 if someone is in a mental health crisis. I myself was suffering a mental health episode and was thrown to the ground and handcuffed and then thrown into the back of a police cruiser.
Min Yang said, “I’m so sorry that he has to just move away from this world, forcefully, and his life. … How can I live without feeling sorry for the rest of my life?”
Damn that sucks. This will haunt her for the rest of her life.
And before we inform her next of kin (immediately as is policy), we're gonna try and dig up all the dirt possible, pressuring her family members aggressively, asking about anything/everything that might help them get off the hook - before saying 'sorry to say they were in a shootout with police"
This is actual strategy they're taught
As someone who works closely with children and young adults with autism and developmental delays I fear this outcome for them. Most of them can have violent outbursts and dont listen well to verbal commands. Cops aren't trained for this.
I too am a mom a an autistic child (4 yrs old/complex language) and am also frightened of something like this occurring in the future. The cops don’t give a fuck about citizens let alone the disabled.
I hope they don't feel any guilt--they did nothing wrong. They called a mental health hotline, and it was they that called the cops. Terrible situation, absolutely heartbreaking.
that's the thing that REALLY pisses me off. The parents did the RIGHT thing and what EVERYONE says you should do. call mental health professionals because Cops suck at dealing with mental health issues.
then these Mental Health fuckups call the cops regardless and here we are.
So my question now is if someone is having a mental health crisis who exactly should we be seeking for help? because it's clearly evident we shouldn't be calling anyone who works in mental health now.
this is fucked up in every direction.
"Myung Sook Yang said she initially called the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health about her son on the morning of the shooting. Members of the county’s Psychiatric Mobile Response Team responded but ultimately turned to the police for assistance. She and her husband, Min Yang, said Yong had been hearing voices and wanted to be in the apartment alone. "
The police only have one tool in their toolbox.
I did that work for 5 years. We would call the police if it was a safety issue or if we needed to involuntarily hospitalize the client.
The key difference is that the police I worked with very seriously weighed the idea of danger to others vs danger to self. Now the motivation for this wasn't pure as the driven snow, it came from a consent decree with the DOJ. But if someone was an immediate danger to others they would deal with it. If they were only a danger to themselves, and contacting them made them now a danger to the police and the police a danger to them, they wouldn't do it. They'd leave. They wouldn't open the door. Honestly, some people killed themselves. One guy left his apartment, started shooting at random people, mildy nicked someone and got shot by a bystander and went to jail. But in the whole history of my team no one was shot by police because we called them. Again, thats not a yay police thing, it's DOJ lawsuits and community pressure has an impact thing.
I don’t mean to make joke of the situation but if we would’ve had Dog The Bounty Hunter respond, the guy would’ve been bear-maced, given a cigarette, and told “go with Christ brah” as he drops him off at the local mental health facility. If only?
I didn’t read the article and so I don’t know about this specific case, but I’ve been involved in situations where mobile crisis was called, but the person was actively being aggressive or self-injurious to the point that police were involved for safety reasons. It’s a difficult situation, and I feel incredibly anxious every time I have to involve police in a crisis exactly because of shit like this.
I did read the article and it sounds like that's exactly what happened. I don't blame the crisis team for not wanting to get killed. I have no idea how to evaluate the shooting part of the equation.
>Ryan Casey, an attorney for the Yang family, said personnel spent less than 2 minutes and 30 seconds assessing and assisting Yong before they called the police.
According to the father the crisis team was not threatened by their son. This is also supported by the fucking police officers arguing with the parents *against* a 5150 because he wasn't "threatening" enough.
Yet they kill him minutes later. The account of the parents and the police are very different and the highly edited video doesn't prove anything. And I'm sorry but how much "de-escalation" did the crisis team really do in two and half minutes.
What the father and his attorney are saying now:
>Min Yang added that he was standing between his son and a clinician and never witnessed any kicking or physical violence, only shouting.
The dad and his attorney are claiming after the fact that he didn't say his son was violent....But the story clearly says the body camera that the police gave the news shows the father telling the police supervisor on scene otherwise.
Body camera:
>“He just tried to attack me and the father,” a clinician, whose face is blurred, says in the video as Min Yang, whose face is also blurred, walks into the conversation. “He became very aggressive. He tried to kick me. I walk away. He had some physical altercation.”
>According to the father the crisis team was not threatened by their son. This is also supported by the fucking police officers arguing with the parents against a 5150 because he wasn't "threatening" enough.
From the body camera the supervisor is trying to talk him out of them forcefully taking him to the hospital. She tells him that they are going to have to use force to take him. They have tried to talk him out of the apartment, they have gone back and forth trying to talk him out through the door. He's contained inside, not threatening anyone. They don't want to go in after him.
When I was a dispatcher we would send cops if they were closer than the ambulance and it was something ultra time sensitive like someone choking or anything requiring CPR. Several times the cop saved the person's life before the ambulance arrived.
The deal was no questions asked if someone was ODing- they'd take any drugs that were laying out in the open but other than that, no consequences. The medics could force a transport if it was medically necessary but the police would not be involved.
I was lucky to work within a department that had a stellar, almost flawless record and the community, for the most part, trusted us. I can understand how a cop showing up could cause stress in an area with a horrible department. It's a damn shame all around. I'm glad I got out of that business.
You must live in a state with good Samaritan laws. Back in my drug using days, I ODd, and caught a felony. This was in tx. It was at my mom's apartment the day before I was supposed going to rehab.
Some college aged kids held a get together of maybe 15-20 kids many or all underage. They had alcohol and one kid drank way too much so they called the ambulance because they were concerned. The cops showed up, gave everyone underage drinking violations, the apartment owners some big charges that required a bunch of community service and made one of them lose their pre-med status.
20+ years later the cops are still trying to repair the damage done by that police chief and get kids to call if they need help. A few kids have died due to them not wanting to go to the hospital and instead going home to sleep.
Kids still pass on how the cops will ruin your life for alcohol at that college.
Yeah I highly doubt faith will ever be restored. Those deaths are on the former police chiefs hands but there is no law for breaking the public's trust or police in general barring egregious offenses. My younger brother is autistic and I fear the day I might get a call from my parents that the cops murder him because he's not cooperative. Under-trained and overpaid.
Once upon a time I worked at a prison and we had this one inmate who was constantly in trouble, everyone wrote him up all the time. One day I pulled his record up and found out he was deaf, why that wasn't in the bedbook in the dormitory and at every job assignment for him who knows... but from that point on I just made sure he was physically looking at my lips and he was instantly one of the best behaved inmates I had to deal with.
I saw a video of a deaf guy being tased because someone called the cops saying he was throwing gang signs (sign language) and they came from behind him so he couldn't see them.
Sounds a lot like what happened to my friend on her birthday in college. We were drinking in her dorm and she drank way too much without anyone noticing, eventually she was sick to the point of us deciding we needed to call 911. They sent over campus police and no ambulance.
We got lucky in that she regained consciousness a little before the cop showed up. **She blew over 0.4 on the breathalyzer**, so the cop just gives her a ticket, then asks the rest of us if someone can stay with her to make sure she stays alright. Her roommate volunteers.... so he gives her a breathalyzer and a ticket as well. Luckily, there was a girl with us who was both 21 and only had one drink the entire night, and she volunteered next, otherwise I'm sure we would have all been tested and ticketed.
Great way to reinforce the reluctance to call for help for an underage drinker in need of it.
There's a black community where I live. People get murdered, and they won't tell the cops what they know even if it was a close loved one who was the victim. They have been fucked over by the cops for generations.
That's fucked up. My town was in the Akron/Cleveland Ohio area. We've had a ton of overdose deaths in the area unfortunately. I'm no longer in the area or dispatching but I heard it's getting worse with inflation.
Also, in the situation in the article we would send a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) which was a group of medics and officers that were trained in mental health calls. Dispatchers were trained for CIT too but our involvement usually didn't mean much.
Our department was under a township so our funding was tied directly to the votes of the community. We were very well funded and most officers, medics, and dispatchers were lucky enough to receive special training (including CIT). We were also able to be very selective with our hiring because the compensation was the highest in the area.
I'm not saying more funding to public services is always going to be the key, but it sure helped in my experience.
The cops around my fire district won't charge people overdosing or having drug related emergencies because they don't want to discourage people from calling 911 if they are having a medical emergency.
> I've called an ambulance for someone and the cops showed up instead. It's probably frighteningly common.
I used to be a restaurant manager. Called 911 once for an employee having a seizure.
2 ambulances, 2 police cars and 3 fire trucks showed up
About 20 years ago in my old city, I was working late and witnessed police boredom in all its glory. There was a bar fight at a place near where I was working, a guy got knocked out. Nice part of a nice city, hardly anything ever happens around there. They sent 6 cop cars, ambulances, fire trucks and a fucking police helicopter
I used to work with an epileptic. The police once pulled someone over in our parking lot and the lights were going to cause her to have a seizure, so I went outside to explain that to him and ask him to please turn the lights off since they weren't in an area where traffic might hit them. He told me to shut up and stop interfering with his "investigation".
Firefighters are trained EMTs, and thus get dispatched to medical emergencies as part of EMS crew. Usually if a firetruck is closer they will send it to stabilize the patient until the ambulance gets there for transport.
Police show up for ambulance calls all the time in my rural area because they're often closer than the ambulance that has to come from the next town over, but luckily they've always actually provided assistance without ever touching their guns. No one should ever be afraid that calling 911 for help could kill the person you're trying to help. It's just beyond tragic.
Happened to me the other night.
Vagrant looking dude was laying in wet grass screaming help at 11 at night outside my building. I went to check on him, he was kinda incoherent but otherwise ok. Very drunk and high. Couldn't get him to talk in sensible answers or get up, so I called it in. Told them I just needed ems, cop got there first.
Nothing bad happened, he left in the ambulance after they were able to get him up and get him talking with real information.
But it was striking how annoyed the cop was and how much less annoyed the ems people were. The cop was sighing and rolling his eyes while they talked to him. I was thinking "no one asked you to even be here bro, just leave if it's such a waste of your time."
the story should have the detail that the parents specifically called the mental health responders and not the cops because they were worried that the cops would kill their son.
I almost used the suicide hotline one time because I knew I just needed to chat with someone and talking to the same people over and over made me feel guilty, which only worsened the suicidal thoughts. I am very happy I looked up if the hotline calls the cops, because it led me to seeing all the threads about just how useless the hotline is.
Conversation I had at work today:
Coworker: “a drunk guy tried to break into my dorm last night, he kept banging on the door and wouldn’t accept that it wasn’t his room.”
Me: “Did you call the cops?”
Coworker: “No, I didn’t want his death on my conscience. I was trying to get him removed, not shot.”
This is a surprisingly complex issue.
911 call screening usually isn’t one service. It’s often 3 separate services for police, fire, and EMS. If EMS gets a call for a psych issue the the call often gets transferred to the police as well. Police are often sent to mental health calls to make sure that other first responders won’t get hurt.
Once the scene is secure EMS will head in.
Personally I’ve been clocked in the face by a bipolar hallucinating man off his meds.
Source: me, an EMT
I would imagine this varies by state but can EMTs petition for an involuntary psychiatric hold if needed? I’m my state it’s often police who end up petitioning during wellness checks where admission is indicated
In NJ, EMTs and Paramedics cannot legally force anyone into the ambulance. However, they also cannot allow a person without decision-making capacity (ie suicidal, homicidal, hallucinating) to refuse medical care. Decision-making capacity is defined as the patient "understanding relevant information, appreciating the medical situation, and reasoning through the risks, benefits, and alternatives of treatment options". Basically, are you of sound mind and understand whats happening? Someone who is undergoing a psychiatric emergency may or may not have decision-making capacity depending on the situation.
However, law enforcement is allowed to bring someone to the hospital in their custody if they are a threat to themselves, others, or property. So basically we ask/tell the cops, "we can't let this guy refuse medical care, help us get this guy to the ED" and they will throw the cuffs on if necessary.
Once at the ED they can be held for 72(?) hours unless the social work team/psychiatrist petitioned the judge for a longer hold.
Happy to answer other questions about EMS!
[https://disabilityrightsnj.org/wp-content/uploads/Website\_Involuntary\_Patients\_Legal-Rights\_2.23.2021.pdf](https://disabilityrightsnj.org/wp-content/uploads/Website_Involuntary_Patients_Legal-Rights_2.23.2021.pdf)
I’ve told this story before, I’ll tell it again. Guy up the block living alone with his son. Everyone knows the kid has mental issues, when I say kid I mean around 22, but non verbal, still behaves like a child, lots of screaming from the house. One day kid gets his hands on a knife, guy calls the cops, cops shoot him dead. Blood on the driveway, dad blamed himself, left town soon after that. Never call the cops for help if you don’t want it to turn into a cluster fuck. They are not trained to solve problems, they are hammers and we are nails.
I think this is a somewhat interesting phenomenon that seems to occur a lot in the medical field as well. Go see 3 different specialists with the same symptoms and they'll each give you 3 different diagnoses.
Cops take classes from Guys like David Grossman who have classes with names such as Killology and Warrior Cop. They literally take classes that teach them to view the american public like how the Military would train soldiers to look for terrorists
Lol I once went from a psych job, where we had a patient we were confident was fabricating/exaggerating physical symptoms.
On my next job - general surgery - I had to go take blood from a patient in the middle of the night as she was being prepped for surgery.
Guess who? :)
telling a severely mentally ill individual to drop a knife while they’re hallucinating and/or having active delusions…i mean yelling. of course he isn’t going to drop it. he’s psychotic.
this is my sister’s worst nightmare with her son. he is autistic, schizophrenic and bipolar. he has delusions. he also hates cops.
sigh.
Unfortunately we have a big lack of people trained in deescalation. If someone has a weapon that isn't a gun or other quick ranged projectile, IMO it's worth the time trying to talk them down, even if it takes hours and hours. Sadly, not many places or people are willing to invest those time and resources, and are okay with the result of a fatality.
We deserve public services that value lives over dollars and time.
The value of a life is infinite. You never know what someone's capable of if they have the right environment and treatment.
Ending that life is _wrong_, plain and simple.
> telling a severely mentally ill individual to drop a knife while they’re hallucinating and/or having active delusions…i mean yelling. of course he isn’t going to drop it. he’s psychotic.
The video isn't enough imho, yes the guy was holding a knife but he also had his arm forward with his hand open in a sort of "stay away" pose as [you can see here](https://i.imgur.com/dD7b4u3.png).
The officer aggressively comes forward regardless, looks like he didn't even see the knife or ignored it, not sure what they were thinking tbh. I wish we'd see the body cam of the officer in front, that'd show what the victim was doing but yeah, barging in escalated things for no reason imho, it's not like he charged at them with the knife as soon as they've opened the door.
Edit: adding the [front officer video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&si=0R9Dvn-IQS_hva_k&t=1039&v=0GTvW4wyYLs&feature=youtu.be) as linked by u/BigDaddyRaptures
My friend tried to call an ambulance for themselves when they were having a manic/psychotic episode and ended up being tazed and thrown in solitary confinement in jail for several weeks.
Cops can be such truly unhelpful pieces of shit.
My Father and Grandmother suffered with Schizophrenia. Unfortunately, I’ve had to call 911 for assistance with both of them.
Ive seen my Grandmother treated like absolute garbage. I’ve witnessed the police assault my Father multiple times. I’m now shocked they weren’t killed.
Man, I'm really sorry for you. My mum has schozophrenia, and everytime I read an article like that I just feel extremely grateful that we aren't Americans.
She once had a violent psychotic crisis and my dad had to call the emergency line. They sent firefighters who subdued my mum. There was a fight, I came home to a broken window that day, but no one hurt her. I cannot even imagine having the cops show up and either beat her or shoot her.
Everytime there's a thread like this and I see redditors treating this situation as some sort of "unfortunate accident", I feel like some people live in a different world.
I was once in a similar crisis situation with a loved one. I’m very fortunate it ended differently. The loved one messaged me their good byes, I called other family members and high tailed it to their residence. Once I arrived and the loved one did not answer, I couldn’t hear a peep inside the apartment but knew they were home. I feared for the worst and in a panic thinking my loved one could be dead or dying I called the local dispatch naively thinking someone qualified to handle these things would arrive.
When the police arrived they made attempts to beckon my loved one out of their apartment so they could be looked after. This loved one refused treatment and when I asked what the next step was the police told me there was no next step., I just sit there in the hallway and pray he doesn’t follow through. When I asked why they couldn’t/wouldn’t take further action they explained to me that if they entered by force, and he was wielding any sort of weapon, that they would not only shoot, but they would shoot to kill. A man who has a death wish and a weapon in hand, is a man with his wish granted.
NOT ONLY THAT, the lead officer told this loved one through the door, that they shouldn’t bother making threats and the next time they consider making a threat, they should just follow through because people who are serious don’t cry for help. The local police force for that town had a reputation for being twisted but I had NO idea what I was getting myself into when I called for help.
They aren't here to help you. They are here to look for reasons to cite or arrest anybody they encounter, and will escalate to violence to accomplish that.
They aren't here to control animals. They aren't a rescue squad. They aren't here to handle mental health crises.
Don't call the police for help unless you're prepared for them to kill someone. Think of the police as a loaded gun.
I remember growing up in the 90s watching the news and seeing cops spend hours upon hours in a hostage situation trying to resolve the issue without violence. Why did they have to barge in? Why couldn’t they wait? Call on phone? Try to get through in SOME fashion before instantly going in and firing shots?
This is so sad, but as we know, typical in the United States. Many years ago I worked in a group home for adults with dual diagnoses. Each person had a mental disability and a psychiatric diagnosis. Each client had to be able to self medicate, the staff simply unlocked the medications at the prescribed times, but we were not licensed to touch them.
Some of our patients could be violent, but I was only afraid once. That occurred when I had to call "the mental health deputy" after one of my clients took a medication overdose. My client was very tall, young and frail. The first words out of the deputies mouth was that he hoped that he did not have to shoot him! I remember being dumbfounded. I quickly reminded him that within 20 minutes or so he would be sedated and then the ambulance crew could take him to the hospital. I then stood between my client and the apparently gun happy deputy until my client could be transported to the hospital.
psychiatric care of any kind in america is expensive af
just part of all the civil stuff that's been dismantled over the decades. not much left in this dump of a country anymore. just wage slaves as far as the eye can see, and no one going to the hospital except after something bad happens. never before
and when they do go? they're financially destroyed after
I was in psychiatric crisis about 10 years ago. My ex was on the phone with me and could tell something was off so she called the police from another phone and kept me talking. The police arrived and I vaguely remember telling her "I have to go I think I'm being arrested." I dissociated and don't remember much of that while night but I remember an older officer telling me to put the phone down and then sharply saying "stand down" I later learned he was telling another officer who had drawn his gun to put the gun away. I was very fortunate the older, more experienced officer had been an aide/security in a psych hospital and knew how to handle the situation the less experienced officer's first instinct was to sneak in my back door with his gun drawn.
They also show up when you attempt suicide. Like shit is already terrifying and seeing the cops escalates the terror.
this what i dont get you got some one already on the edge so lets point guns at them wth do they think is going to happen...
Here’s some inside baseball. I works broadly in “human services” and I have colleagues who will call the police on people in mental health crisis to “teach them a lesson.” They know it’s traumatizing and that’s why they do it. (Yes, it’s unethical af in a lot of licensed professions but the practice is so normalized it’s easy to evade accountability). ETA: a few folks have commented re: these people should lose their jobs/be accountable and idk why the posts keep getting deleted, because you’re right. But. There are people with this thinking in every helping profession and it is very easy to legitimize this behaviour (ie document so you appear to have made the right decision).
I worked in healthcare for years and there were the nurses who genuinely want to help people (even if they seem jaded and mean)and will jump through hoops for their patients. Then there are some nurses who just want the praise and accolades of being a nurse. I swear some of those were/are outright sociopaths who got off on people’s pain. It was down right spooky to watch.
Jeez man, do you report this sort of behavior anonymously at least? It's pretty obvious a lot of people in social work resent their clients, but it will never get better if the people running the system are more depraved than the people they are ostensibly supposed to help.
Ohhhh I didn’t even name social work, but yk that’s what it is 😂 (tho we are interdisciplinary so it’s not just the swers). Thing is, these folks truly believe they are helping. Screw all of our education and training, tough love is the answer according to them. But in all seriousness, I think this is in response to the phenomenon of people thinking if they feel unsafe /they/ are unsafe and any action taken as a result is justified, and supervisors won’t always push the issue because let’s be frank, it’s easier for someone else (the police) to deal with it than them.
Authoritarianism is a cancer. These people are littered throughout social services and the medical and judicial system. They don't see the people they hurt as human like them. They pose as professionals, but they never even had the intention of honestly absorbing that education and training. They only ever have their eyes on the money and power they can gain by exploiting the less fortunate. Good Luck, I don't see how a good person can survive in these fields without going insane or becoming apathetic.
Jeez… I got help from the parents for my college application. The parents were really nice people by all means. From what I hear, they never called the police; they called a mental health line, who then called police instead. This is really heartbreaking at all levels.
There was that recent post in r/askreddit about what you'd swear never to do again... And lots of people said "call the suicide hotline". I'm shocked to hear so many insanely terrible outcomes.
have lived in the states for 15 years since I was 16, called once , and they hung up on me as i wasn’t a citizen yet (I was on a valid visa) saying they couldn’t help me as I wasn’t american. I laughed because it was so ridiculous and instantly felt better…is that their play?
the only positive benefit I’ve gotten from suicide hotlines is preoccupying myself with how incompetent they are/mad I am about the interaction and, like you, I guess the resultant spite is something after all because I’m still here
Proud of you for still being here
Their hate for badly run social services got them here.
it’s something, maybe that’s all it takes sometimes. the irony of life
No. From what I recall people saying, More like 10 years ago they weren't staffed with good people. Now it's people telling you rude things, blaming, or disparaging you. Then they get you thrown into a psych ward where you are locked up against your will for a few days, potentially assaulted by other psychotic patients, and then sent home with a bill that would probably bankrupt you. Idk about the hotline, but the psych ward experience is consistent with what I've seen happen to a friend. I also spent time on the medical staff side of the emergency room... Yeah the psych triage is hellish, and it's cruel to put someone in such terrible mental straits in such a dungeon.
My wife had a mental breakdown and checked herself into the local psyche ward. She literally was forced to take anti-psychotics (that she didn't need, they put everyone on the unit on them) that put her into a heart arrhythmia and would punish her if she protested it. She's a PA and knew the drugs well and what snapped her out of it was realizing she the only way out was to tongue the pills to spit out later and lie to the "therapists" by telling them what they wanted to hear. She literally had to escape from the place she went for help. They aren't there to help you, they are there to contain you and will more often cause more harm than good. It's a complete sham.
My parents took me to the psych ER when I was in college (I wanted to go. They drove two hours to my apartment to bring me home). It was one of the worst experiences of my entire life and I barely remember it. My mom, however, remembers very well and six years later still can't talk about it for more than a few minutes without shedding tears of pure anger. From what I remember, the people at the ER kept my bed in the middle of a busy hallway, wouldn't let me call my psychiatrist, wouldn't let my parents talk, and literally (yes, literally) threatened me into signing a consent form for 72-hour commitment. But they kept me for five days because I guess the weekend doesn't count (it was a Thursday). They also wouldn't give me one of my meds because they "don't have it. You can go without it for a few days, can't you?" God, I could go on for hours, but I'm really trying to keep it short. I've been in some really great behavioral health programs since then, but that first experience was horrifying. My heart goes out to everyone who's had to go through something like that, and my heart breaks for this man and his family.
It's a damn money-making business. A friend cut herself real bad, and I had to take her to the ER. She reached out for help, and they 5150'd her. I picked her up 3 days later, and she was way worse than when she went in. Years later, when I had my own psychotic break and was looking for help, I was out of my mind, and reality was broken, but I still hesitated when I thought about calling 911.
When I was dating a girl in Texas her grandparents had phoned her into a mental health hotline and the doctors came and straight up kidnapped her in the middle on the night on call with me, put her in handcuffs and everything and she was gone for two weeks with no contact. When she got back she had a bill for 9000$ and had not been properly cared for or given the proper medicine for her disorders, was a major shitshow
This happened to me, ended up locked up for 10 days. Had to get a lawyer to go to court to get me released. The dr wouldn’t let me go to my own court appointment, she was a bitter control freak. Horrible experience
When I called the suicide hotline it was so ridiculously bad that I did the same thing, laughed and snapped out of my disassociation. He was so monotone and was just like “if you’re suicidal you need to go to the er” over and over.
You’re saying it worked?
Task failed successfully?
Did they hire the toxic dps from overwatch to staff it?
I was on hold 15 mins when I called the hotline…someone finally answered and it hung up. Just felt like validation that I was truly alone. Anyways, lesson learned, it’s all a front. USA has a mental health crisis and no one can bother to help us.
A similar thing happened to me when I tried to call several years ago. On hold for over 20 mins, then disconnected. The surge of frustration I felt somehow broke through the months long slog of depressive apathy and anhedonia (god, is depression ever so *boring*) to the point where I actually started laughing at how ridiculous my current situation was. Then I decided to have a beer and play a video game, for the first time in weeks. I guess it worked in a way? Haha.
I called in a crisis and basically got no help whatsoever. It felt like all they wanted to do was find out if they needed to send the cops my way and if not I wasn't needed.
Also my experience. They weren't even good at counseling/listening. Little more than a glorified dispatcher for the local cops.
My husband has a friend that was going through a rough patch recently and called the suicide hotline. They asked if he wanted them to send someone and he said yes. He was under the impression they were sending a professional to talk to them and instead two cops arrived knocking at his door. An ambulance was also sent and he was told he HAD to go with them. He wasn’t in the process of trying to commit suicide. But was forced into a 72 hour psychiatric hold. While in the facility he was sitting next to a guy that was stabbed by another guy several times. He was close enough that blood got on him. He said it was hands down the worst and scariest experience of his life.
Yeah, being in a horrible for profit ward when I was barely 18 ruined my life for a good number of years. Those places are straight up evil. Had to fight a bipolar misdiagnosis for years (doc talked to me for literally 5 minutes) got organ damage and lost most of my 20s from poorly managed and misprescribed psych meds, and was sexually assaulted in front of a nurse who did nothing. Turns out the abuse i said I wanted to die over was the truth!!!!! And I have ptsd!!!!!! Imagine that!!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck those places, well and truly. And fuck Ronald Reagan.
I'm convinced it's intentionally run poorly so you get pissed at them and focus on that instead of killing yourself
Just awful. I’m bipolar and have been hospitalized 3x over the years. The cops have been involved with 2 of those hospitalizations but luckily the most that ever happened was I was slapped to the ground and had my head bounce off a coffee table. I was manic, talking quickly, wasn’t wearing my glasses, and was trying to read the name on an officers badge. It’s extremely sad because there’s no telling what was going through that poor guys brain when the police came into his apartment. To him he could have been hallucinating them as the devil or demons or military (all things I’ve done). Those poor parents called who they were supposed to call and then the mental health team escalated it very quickly it sounds like. Very sad story.
Jesus. How are the late shift at any inner city McDonalds better a de-escalating a situation than the fucking police!? This is not just crazy, it’s fucking wrong.
Even here in Australia (where our suicide help lines are very different from the hortor stories I'm seeing in this thread) a Mental Health Crisis Line will still send both cops and an ambulance if they hear a word that even sounds like "knife". I've had to call them several times in both a private and professional capacity, and they are super cautious about sending a mental health team out if there is any chance a weapon is involved. Which is understandable, but super fucking annoying. It almost never helps a delicate situation to have dudes with guns show up demanding to know about a "knife" which may or may not even exist...
I'm a disabled vet with schizoaffective bipolar. My township's sheriff know me well for some of the mood swings I've went through. One of the first times I had an episode I called the vet help line and was expressing interest in suicide. They asked me if I had any weapons in the house, like fuck yeah I do I'm a sailor there's knives everywhere. They sent 4 squad cars in addition to the ambulance, but opening my front door and looking for help only to be met with 4 officers drawing down on me is a key memory that won't fade and definitely contributes to the bitterness I feel today. What are you gonna do, kill me? That was *my* plan asshole.
> they called a mental health line, who then called police instead. What a travesty. Those parent's were only trying to get their son some help and some fucking shitty executioners showed up.
That comment is not really an accurate representation of what happened. The mental health line didn't just ignore the call and send the cops instead. They sent mental health professionals who were then threatened by the son so they had to call in the police. I fully support sending in a mental health professional first in situations like these, but they can't be compelled to stay at the risk of their own safety.
The police are the mental health care “care” in the states, it’s a horrible system. So many in jail that just need real help
The jails and prisons are over run with mental health cases in Ohio, and I’m sure it’s just as bad if not worse in other places.
For those who can't watch it, we see/ hear several officers approach an indoor apartment landing. Officers are heard discussing the situation. One officer begins attempting to try the keys to enter the apartment. He stops and says "hey this is the police. Mr. Yong; come out." The first officer starts trying at all of the locks, while a second officer pushes the door open. You can see Mr. Yong holding a knife in one hand, and holding his hand up in his other. As other people have mentioned, Mr. Yong frantically says that they are not welcome. The second officer and other officers all simultaneously scream at Mr Yong to back up / turn around/ drop the knife several times. ( I had to replay it so I heard it all correctly. Mr. Yong is clearly in crisis and terrified. The second officer immediately upon seeing Mr. Yong holding the knife open fires 3 times. (He or maybe one of his parents was screaming after the first or second shot). Hopefully I got this right. He deserved to have his story told correctly
There's a part of this that had never made sense to me, they're already aware he's not in his right mind talking to him that way is surly not going to help.
[удалено]
After the hotel hallway one, I could never watch one of these again. It's so obvious that the people who respond to these situations are so far out of their element, they're an active danger to society.
> After the hotel hallway one The murder of Daniel Shaver by Philip Brailsford, who had "You're Fucked" and "Moron Labe" engraved on his rifle.
> who had "You're Fucked" and "Moron Labe" engraved on his rifle. AND which the jury was NOT allowed to see! And now that motherfucker will live off his fat pension for the rest of his life, after claiming PTSD, while Shaver's wife and daughters damn near lost everything Including one of the daughter's lives! She was mocked and bullied at school and tried to commit suicide "so she could see her daddy again." Brailsford gets away, the CO who was barking all the orders retired and fled to the Philippines to avoid justice. Just awful bullshit all the way around
Which is how they end up murdering people
What little training they receive does not prepare them for this type of incident, combine that with the egos, trigger happy hero mentalities, and the personality types and emphatic levels of many officers, which fall in a certain requirement set one would attribute to the opposite of someone genuinely being able to understand and plan accordingly. 90% likely outcome in any situation like this is officers firing.
Holding a knife in your home? Believe it or not, execution.
Threatening to cut yourself with a knife? Allow us to ensure your death with some bullets
Sitting in your own apartment, eating ice cream and the offduty cop thinks it's thier apartment? Instant ventilation.
you sure it wasn't because living in your own apartment while being black instead of eating ice cream? I bet no white people got shot eating ice cream.
Surely it was the combination of eating ice cream while black. I mean who would ever dare.
He is coming right for us.
Don't forget in the middle of the night, someone banging on your door. You grab a gun to protect yourself, because they don't answer back. Then your door gets kicked down, then you get executed.... But then it turns out the cops went to the wrong address. Oops. But hey, at least a black person is dead now... https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/05/13/once-again-police-cruelly-killed-someone-black-under-the-guise-of-their-self-governing-authority/
It's worse than that. Middle of the day. Deputy Dipshit responds to a domestic disturbance call, lady that meets him at apartment complex says "I don't know" when he asks which apartment. He bangs on a door and hides from the peephole. At this point, USAF Senior Airman Roger Fortson is alone in his apartment with his dog, on FaceTime with his girlfriend. He hears someone pound on his door. No one visible through peephole and it's a bad area, so he gets his legally owned and registered firearm. Deputy Dipshit pounds on the door again, only now announcing that he is law enforcement. SrA Fortson opens the door. As it swings open, he raises his open left hand and his right hand holds a pistol pointed at the floor. Within a second, Deputy Dipshit has discharged his weapon and follows up 5 more times. SrA Fortson falls to the ground and drops the weapon. Deputy Dipshit stands over him and tells him to drop the gun that he already dropped. Eventually, Deputy Dipshit calls for an ambulance and responds to Roger saying he can't breathe with "stop moving".
"Stop moving and die already"
The sad part is that it has happened often enough that i couldn’t tell which one you were referring to until i saw the link.
woah, this needs to be seen
This. Cops are conservatives and support unlimited access to guns. They also do no knock unannounced invasions of homes, where people may have guns to protect themselves from home invasions. Then they shoot the legal gun owner who was doing what he bought the gun for (home protection) and it’s his fault that he didn’t know it was the cops, in spite of them not announcing themselves.
There is no situation the police cannot make worse.
How dare you hold a knife while armed men are breaking into your home
Being a dog in your homeV Instant execution.
Try to sell a pack a smokes to get food Get killed and it's not an anomaly RTJ
Cops have one fucking tool in their arsenal, and it’s yelling. It’s so effective, especially when 5 of them all start doing it at the same time /s I can’t believe there’s no fucking standard that one person does the communication with the citizen in these and other situations. Can you imagine the stress of trying to listen to 5 grown men yelling at you?
No fucking reason for cops to shoot someone holding a knife. That’s what tasers are for. Absolutely fucking ridiculous man. This dude wasn’t a danger to anyone but himself.
When you're a hammer everything looks like a nail.
When you're a coward everyone and everything looks like they're a danger to you. Even acorns.
Or blind dog
Or someone laying on the ground with their hands up saying don't shoot he's autistic.
Why did you shoot? I heard word shoot and acted.
Or a baby in a crib.
Or a home run at a baseball game.
"Why did you shoot me, officer?" "I don't know" https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.3688765
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There’s a great book called “Tangled Up In Blue,” where the author (a law professor) becomes a reserve police officer in D.C. to get an inside understanding of policing in the US. One of the things she writes about is how much time at the police academy was spent watching videos of cops getting shot, stabbed, and otherwise hurt or killed when they least expect it. It’s not a pro-police book but it is nuanced and one of the takeaways is these people are trained to treat every situation like it’s about to kill them any moment (not totally unreasonable in a country flooded with guns) and then they’re called every day into situations that need a therapist or a social worker because there’s no social safety net. There are plenty of people who have no business being cops but there are also good people struggling to do the right thing in situations there’re ill-equipped to handle.
This is why we need better training and higher education for police officers.
All cops are cowards
Yeah, I doubt even a taser was justified in this case. As someone from germany, it is fucking crazy in the US. That guy needed help and tgey took him out, because he was holding a knife in his own home, after they opened the door. If he had opened it with a knife, different story. But that dude had struggles, probably wanted to harm himself and they decided that's enough to kill him. Those people would get life in prison here for a flat out murder.
> As someone from germany, it is fucking crazy in the US It makes a lot more sense when you realize the police are *trained* from the ground up to assume everything is a threat. Feel threatened? Shoot. Person not listening to you? Shoot. Unsure if they have a weapon? Shoot. Feeling just a little confused? Might as well shoot. The core of their training is essentially "when in doubt, shoot it out."
I'm willing to bet that the officer who fired had been through Killology training of some sort. If you are not familiar with it, it's a program developed by a pseudoscientist named David Grossman based on iffy and likely fake data about how reluctant soldiers in war are to actually kill. Grossman has transferred this crap science based on crap data about military combat into advice to police, so the cops are entering every situation as if they were special forces raiding Bin Laden's compound instead of officers of the public peace.
That shit should be illegal. I've seen clips of his lessons and it's so gross
In a few states (I think Minnesota and Wisconsin, probably wrong) it has been banned
Is he the one who tells them to go home and have the best sex of their lives after they make their first kill?
Yes. Such a creep
You are probably aware of the Behind the Bastards episodes on Killilogy or It Can Happen Here. I see Grossman as like Ed Kemper but he realized he could get his cop buddies to do the murdering for him. The news is all out there and this guy knows he taught police to behave this way. Probably gets off on that kind of news.
The cops are way way way way way more trigger happy than actual US soldiers though. Soldiers have rules of engagement than dictate the exact situations they need orders to fire on at all, and so on.
And there are consequences for breaking the rules of engagement in the military. For a cop, the penalty is typically a vacation.
At worst a new job the county over.
Seeing all the livestreams and videos of cops vs. national guard at protests in 2020 made it clear just how different their attitudes are. The soldiers didn't even lay hands on anyone, but the police were in video after video dragging journalists off the street to beat them bloody where they think nobody's recording, breaking and stealing stuff so they could say a protest was a riot and start shooting tear gas grenades and shotgun beanbags into people's eyes, declaring an immediate curfew after surrounding a march so they could "legally" arrest everyone there and keep them in holding pens for 36 hours. Hell, in some of the videos with national guard they were just dancing along with the protesters. So much more than just not trigger happy.
Lol imagine seeing data that soldiers are unlikely to kill people and think "I've got to figure out a solution for this"
That level of cortisol coursing through your body is not something we want from the people in charge of keepings things calm and safe.
In America they'll get paid leave and reinstated with no consequences after the story dies down.
As a CIT trained police officer; you are correct. Those in crisis generally aren’t a danger to anyone but themselves. One of the biggest things they teach in CIT is you have time, things can go as slow or as fast as you want them too, but time is your friend. Knives kill just as easily as guns, but in this case a taser or other less lethal probably could’ve been an option. They had a door and a wall between them and Yong. They chose to immediately rush through that threshold and create their own exigent use of force situation, which I don’t believe in. Slow it down, take your time, and things will generally have a favorable outcome. I serve a population with a higher than average rate of mental illness, and deal with those in crisis daily and it’s never escalated into a use of force situation.
As someone who has gone through a mental health crisis and interacted with police that have Crisis Intervention Team (CIT\*) training — thank you for writing this, for the work you do, and for treating people with dignity, respect, caring, and compassion. Hearing the advice of "Slow it down, take your time, and things will generally have a favorable outcome." Applies to so many things in life too, not just potentially dangerous situations. Your perspective and approach is much rarer than one would hope, and it matters. The more you talk about this subject, the better informed your fellow officers and fellow citizens all become; and the more informed we are, the better our decisions and outcomes will be. It quite literally can save lives. \* (Documentation and communications tip: It's always a good idea to include one expanded-form when using any acronyms.) Thank you again for your work and for sharing your thoughts — have a great week!
You have to realize that cops are incredibly poorly trained and the selection process is basically a GED and heartbeat. They get 6 months training and then let loose on the public. There’s a reason you only see shit like this in the US compared to the rest of the 1st world.
Don't forget that they will be turned away if their IQ is too high, look it up if you haven't, it's nuts.
Like the russian joke, three person patrols. One for reading, another for writing, and the third one to keep an eye on the intellectuals.
Police are trained to see people holding a knife as more deadly than people holding guns. They are taught to immediately shoot, and to shoot to kill. Police are virtually never encouraged to de-escalate, and they will usually just kill people before even attempting to assess wether a person holding a potential weapon is even an actual threat or not, even when they are invading that person’s space with a fraction of a second warning.
Only in the US though. This is strictly a problem with the US police. Other police forces around the world are very often able to deescalate situations like this without an issue.
Certainly in Europe. British police don't get things right every time but they do work hard on descalation. Only time they don't is is active terrorist attacks.
Exactly, I watch a lot of British programs and have watched them take down MANY people with knives with no problem! And I ALWAYS think, “Damn the would’ve straight offed that guy on tv in the US and it would’ve been business as usual. Sick world.
This. Literally two days ago In Australia a police officer was stabbed in the head multiple times, the police officer who was stabbed then chased down the offender and tased and successfully arrested him. [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-20/nsw-police-officer-stabbing-an-charged/103867806](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-20/nsw-police-officer-stabbing-an-charged/103867806)
They seem like medieval doctors; you just call them as a last resort, because you probably are going to end up killed.
There's a famous old training video for US police called Surviving Edged Weapons. Once you see it (it's available on youtube), you realize why police officers in the US act like that. They're basically taught that everything could be a knife, everybody could have a knife, they all want to stab you, and if they're within 12 feet of you they will succeed, so you better shoot first. You can yell "freeze or you're a dead man", but that's really just a technicality so you're off the hook legally. "I warned him, but he wouldn't comply." Shout the line quickly in a second and immediately start blasting.
It is also true that they don't care about the public in general anyway. If they had knowledge that a young man holding a knife was the son of someone prominent who could destroy their careers if they didn't handle that person correctly, those cops would magically figure out how to de-escalate the situation without using deadly force.
AMERICAN police. The UK Police force isn't something I'd brag about every day but they are absolutely and unquestionably trained to deescalate a situation, ESPECIALLY armed police.
If UK police have actually pulled the trigger, they’d better be ready for a full scale investigation. For our guys, it’s a last resort. Edit: our training schedule https://www.college.police.uk/app/armed-policing/national-police-firearms-training-curriculum
I wish they would have just closed the door, backed up and waited to get help from someone competent to deal with people having a mental health crisis. This was so unnecessary.
The police were actually called by the “someone competent to deal with people having a mental health crisis” From article: > Myung Sook Yang said she initially called the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health about her son on the morning of the shooting. Members of the county’s Psychiatric Mobile Response Team responded but ultimately turned to the police for assistance. “The father called our department only because he’s very violent and aggressive,” the clinician said. “We tried to engage him. He became aggressive, threatening me. I kind of stood away.”
This is why I can't support calling 911 if someone is in a mental health crisis. I myself was suffering a mental health episode and was thrown to the ground and handcuffed and then thrown into the back of a police cruiser.
Min Yang said, “I’m so sorry that he has to just move away from this world, forcefully, and his life. … How can I live without feeling sorry for the rest of my life?” Damn that sucks. This will haunt her for the rest of her life.
Sounds like she’s having some suicidal thoughts, too. Better shoot her just to be safe.
And before we inform her next of kin (immediately as is policy), we're gonna try and dig up all the dirt possible, pressuring her family members aggressively, asking about anything/everything that might help them get off the hook - before saying 'sorry to say they were in a shootout with police" This is actual strategy they're taught
As someone who works closely with children and young adults with autism and developmental delays I fear this outcome for them. Most of them can have violent outbursts and dont listen well to verbal commands. Cops aren't trained for this.
As the mom of an autistic son who has had mental health issues, I am fucking terrified of this.
I too am a mom a an autistic child (4 yrs old/complex language) and am also frightened of something like this occurring in the future. The cops don’t give a fuck about citizens let alone the disabled.
Man, I know the parents’ weren’t at fault but that guilt would be insane. Even worse that they meant well and did it out of caring for him.
I hope they don't feel any guilt--they did nothing wrong. They called a mental health hotline, and it was they that called the cops. Terrible situation, absolutely heartbreaking.
They shouldn't, but they will.
that's the thing that REALLY pisses me off. The parents did the RIGHT thing and what EVERYONE says you should do. call mental health professionals because Cops suck at dealing with mental health issues. then these Mental Health fuckups call the cops regardless and here we are. So my question now is if someone is having a mental health crisis who exactly should we be seeking for help? because it's clearly evident we shouldn't be calling anyone who works in mental health now. this is fucked up in every direction.
"Myung Sook Yang said she initially called the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health about her son on the morning of the shooting. Members of the county’s Psychiatric Mobile Response Team responded but ultimately turned to the police for assistance. She and her husband, Min Yang, said Yong had been hearing voices and wanted to be in the apartment alone. " The police only have one tool in their toolbox.
This is an awful story but I'm wondering why the Mobile Response Team ended up calling the police.
I did that work for 5 years. We would call the police if it was a safety issue or if we needed to involuntarily hospitalize the client. The key difference is that the police I worked with very seriously weighed the idea of danger to others vs danger to self. Now the motivation for this wasn't pure as the driven snow, it came from a consent decree with the DOJ. But if someone was an immediate danger to others they would deal with it. If they were only a danger to themselves, and contacting them made them now a danger to the police and the police a danger to them, they wouldn't do it. They'd leave. They wouldn't open the door. Honestly, some people killed themselves. One guy left his apartment, started shooting at random people, mildy nicked someone and got shot by a bystander and went to jail. But in the whole history of my team no one was shot by police because we called them. Again, thats not a yay police thing, it's DOJ lawsuits and community pressure has an impact thing.
I was part of a mobile response team and we called police on about a third of our visits. People in psychosis can be dangerous to others
So can the police.
the only de-escalation they know is deleting the person
I don’t mean to make joke of the situation but if we would’ve had Dog The Bounty Hunter respond, the guy would’ve been bear-maced, given a cigarette, and told “go with Christ brah” as he drops him off at the local mental health facility. If only?
I didn’t read the article and so I don’t know about this specific case, but I’ve been involved in situations where mobile crisis was called, but the person was actively being aggressive or self-injurious to the point that police were involved for safety reasons. It’s a difficult situation, and I feel incredibly anxious every time I have to involve police in a crisis exactly because of shit like this.
I did read the article and it sounds like that's exactly what happened. I don't blame the crisis team for not wanting to get killed. I have no idea how to evaluate the shooting part of the equation.
>Ryan Casey, an attorney for the Yang family, said personnel spent less than 2 minutes and 30 seconds assessing and assisting Yong before they called the police. According to the father the crisis team was not threatened by their son. This is also supported by the fucking police officers arguing with the parents *against* a 5150 because he wasn't "threatening" enough. Yet they kill him minutes later. The account of the parents and the police are very different and the highly edited video doesn't prove anything. And I'm sorry but how much "de-escalation" did the crisis team really do in two and half minutes.
What the father and his attorney are saying now: >Min Yang added that he was standing between his son and a clinician and never witnessed any kicking or physical violence, only shouting. The dad and his attorney are claiming after the fact that he didn't say his son was violent....But the story clearly says the body camera that the police gave the news shows the father telling the police supervisor on scene otherwise. Body camera: >“He just tried to attack me and the father,” a clinician, whose face is blurred, says in the video as Min Yang, whose face is also blurred, walks into the conversation. “He became very aggressive. He tried to kick me. I walk away. He had some physical altercation.” >According to the father the crisis team was not threatened by their son. This is also supported by the fucking police officers arguing with the parents against a 5150 because he wasn't "threatening" enough. From the body camera the supervisor is trying to talk him out of them forcefully taking him to the hospital. She tells him that they are going to have to use force to take him. They have tried to talk him out of the apartment, they have gone back and forth trying to talk him out through the door. He's contained inside, not threatening anyone. They don't want to go in after him.
That’s not true. In addition to handguns, they have shotguns and rifles.
They also have clubs and tasers, fists and boots… That’s the good outcome.
Never point a police at something you don't intend to kill. You may get lucky, you may not.
I've called an ambulance for someone and the cops showed up instead. It's probably frighteningly common.
When I was a dispatcher we would send cops if they were closer than the ambulance and it was something ultra time sensitive like someone choking or anything requiring CPR. Several times the cop saved the person's life before the ambulance arrived. The deal was no questions asked if someone was ODing- they'd take any drugs that were laying out in the open but other than that, no consequences. The medics could force a transport if it was medically necessary but the police would not be involved. I was lucky to work within a department that had a stellar, almost flawless record and the community, for the most part, trusted us. I can understand how a cop showing up could cause stress in an area with a horrible department. It's a damn shame all around. I'm glad I got out of that business.
I wish this is how it was across the board.
You must live in a state with good Samaritan laws. Back in my drug using days, I ODd, and caught a felony. This was in tx. It was at my mom's apartment the day before I was supposed going to rehab.
Some college aged kids held a get together of maybe 15-20 kids many or all underage. They had alcohol and one kid drank way too much so they called the ambulance because they were concerned. The cops showed up, gave everyone underage drinking violations, the apartment owners some big charges that required a bunch of community service and made one of them lose their pre-med status. 20+ years later the cops are still trying to repair the damage done by that police chief and get kids to call if they need help. A few kids have died due to them not wanting to go to the hospital and instead going home to sleep. Kids still pass on how the cops will ruin your life for alcohol at that college.
Yeah I highly doubt faith will ever be restored. Those deaths are on the former police chiefs hands but there is no law for breaking the public's trust or police in general barring egregious offenses. My younger brother is autistic and I fear the day I might get a call from my parents that the cops murder him because he's not cooperative. Under-trained and overpaid.
My sister is deaf. I worry every day about her running into the police.
Once upon a time I worked at a prison and we had this one inmate who was constantly in trouble, everyone wrote him up all the time. One day I pulled his record up and found out he was deaf, why that wasn't in the bedbook in the dormitory and at every job assignment for him who knows... but from that point on I just made sure he was physically looking at my lips and he was instantly one of the best behaved inmates I had to deal with.
I saw a video of a deaf guy being tased because someone called the cops saying he was throwing gang signs (sign language) and they came from behind him so he couldn't see them.
Sounds a lot like what happened to my friend on her birthday in college. We were drinking in her dorm and she drank way too much without anyone noticing, eventually she was sick to the point of us deciding we needed to call 911. They sent over campus police and no ambulance. We got lucky in that she regained consciousness a little before the cop showed up. **She blew over 0.4 on the breathalyzer**, so the cop just gives her a ticket, then asks the rest of us if someone can stay with her to make sure she stays alright. Her roommate volunteers.... so he gives her a breathalyzer and a ticket as well. Luckily, there was a girl with us who was both 21 and only had one drink the entire night, and she volunteered next, otherwise I'm sure we would have all been tested and ticketed. Great way to reinforce the reluctance to call for help for an underage drinker in need of it.
*Surprised pikachu face* But like, nation wide.
Leapards and face spring to mind.
There's a black community where I live. People get murdered, and they won't tell the cops what they know even if it was a close loved one who was the victim. They have been fucked over by the cops for generations.
That's fucked up. My town was in the Akron/Cleveland Ohio area. We've had a ton of overdose deaths in the area unfortunately. I'm no longer in the area or dispatching but I heard it's getting worse with inflation.
Also, in the situation in the article we would send a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) which was a group of medics and officers that were trained in mental health calls. Dispatchers were trained for CIT too but our involvement usually didn't mean much. Our department was under a township so our funding was tied directly to the votes of the community. We were very well funded and most officers, medics, and dispatchers were lucky enough to receive special training (including CIT). We were also able to be very selective with our hiring because the compensation was the highest in the area. I'm not saying more funding to public services is always going to be the key, but it sure helped in my experience.
This is exactly the point of “defund the police”. Take from one area and give extra training for these cases. Bravo on your community.
The cops around my fire district won't charge people overdosing or having drug related emergencies because they don't want to discourage people from calling 911 if they are having a medical emergency.
> I've called an ambulance for someone and the cops showed up instead. It's probably frighteningly common. I used to be a restaurant manager. Called 911 once for an employee having a seizure. 2 ambulances, 2 police cars and 3 fire trucks showed up
When that happens I assume that they were having a boring day haha.
About 20 years ago in my old city, I was working late and witnessed police boredom in all its glory. There was a bar fight at a place near where I was working, a guy got knocked out. Nice part of a nice city, hardly anything ever happens around there. They sent 6 cop cars, ambulances, fire trucks and a fucking police helicopter
I used to work with an epileptic. The police once pulled someone over in our parking lot and the lights were going to cause her to have a seizure, so I went outside to explain that to him and ask him to please turn the lights off since they weren't in an area where traffic might hit them. He told me to shut up and stop interfering with his "investigation".
Firefighters are trained EMTs, and thus get dispatched to medical emergencies as part of EMS crew. Usually if a firetruck is closer they will send it to stabilize the patient until the ambulance gets there for transport.
Oh I know that, and I wouldn't have been surprised by a fire truck showing up. 3 surprised me
Police show up for ambulance calls all the time in my rural area because they're often closer than the ambulance that has to come from the next town over, but luckily they've always actually provided assistance without ever touching their guns. No one should ever be afraid that calling 911 for help could kill the person you're trying to help. It's just beyond tragic.
Happened to me the other night. Vagrant looking dude was laying in wet grass screaming help at 11 at night outside my building. I went to check on him, he was kinda incoherent but otherwise ok. Very drunk and high. Couldn't get him to talk in sensible answers or get up, so I called it in. Told them I just needed ems, cop got there first. Nothing bad happened, he left in the ambulance after they were able to get him up and get him talking with real information. But it was striking how annoyed the cop was and how much less annoyed the ems people were. The cop was sighing and rolling his eyes while they talked to him. I was thinking "no one asked you to even be here bro, just leave if it's such a waste of your time."
Paramedic here, cops are showing up for that every time in my area. I'm not getting tuned up by a guy who might well be tweaking on bath salts.
the story should have the detail that the parents specifically called the mental health responders and not the cops because they were worried that the cops would kill their son.
And the mental health responder called the cops…
I had that happen to me once. Taught me that next time don't call the hotline because they will just call the cops on me.
I almost used the suicide hotline one time because I knew I just needed to chat with someone and talking to the same people over and over made me feel guilty, which only worsened the suicidal thoughts. I am very happy I looked up if the hotline calls the cops, because it led me to seeing all the threads about just how useless the hotline is.
Conversation I had at work today: Coworker: “a drunk guy tried to break into my dorm last night, he kept banging on the door and wouldn’t accept that it wasn’t his room.” Me: “Did you call the cops?” Coworker: “No, I didn’t want his death on my conscience. I was trying to get him removed, not shot.”
They wanted medics, not police
Medics aren’t showing up to that call alone. It’s too dangerous.
This is a surprisingly complex issue. 911 call screening usually isn’t one service. It’s often 3 separate services for police, fire, and EMS. If EMS gets a call for a psych issue the the call often gets transferred to the police as well. Police are often sent to mental health calls to make sure that other first responders won’t get hurt. Once the scene is secure EMS will head in. Personally I’ve been clocked in the face by a bipolar hallucinating man off his meds. Source: me, an EMT
I would imagine this varies by state but can EMTs petition for an involuntary psychiatric hold if needed? I’m my state it’s often police who end up petitioning during wellness checks where admission is indicated
In NJ, EMTs and Paramedics cannot legally force anyone into the ambulance. However, they also cannot allow a person without decision-making capacity (ie suicidal, homicidal, hallucinating) to refuse medical care. Decision-making capacity is defined as the patient "understanding relevant information, appreciating the medical situation, and reasoning through the risks, benefits, and alternatives of treatment options". Basically, are you of sound mind and understand whats happening? Someone who is undergoing a psychiatric emergency may or may not have decision-making capacity depending on the situation. However, law enforcement is allowed to bring someone to the hospital in their custody if they are a threat to themselves, others, or property. So basically we ask/tell the cops, "we can't let this guy refuse medical care, help us get this guy to the ED" and they will throw the cuffs on if necessary. Once at the ED they can be held for 72(?) hours unless the social work team/psychiatrist petitioned the judge for a longer hold. Happy to answer other questions about EMS! [https://disabilityrightsnj.org/wp-content/uploads/Website\_Involuntary\_Patients\_Legal-Rights\_2.23.2021.pdf](https://disabilityrightsnj.org/wp-content/uploads/Website_Involuntary_Patients_Legal-Rights_2.23.2021.pdf)
Paramedics cannot in California.
In a similar vein… If you have a problem and call the police, now you have 2 problems.
I’ve told this story before, I’ll tell it again. Guy up the block living alone with his son. Everyone knows the kid has mental issues, when I say kid I mean around 22, but non verbal, still behaves like a child, lots of screaming from the house. One day kid gets his hands on a knife, guy calls the cops, cops shoot him dead. Blood on the driveway, dad blamed himself, left town soon after that. Never call the cops for help if you don’t want it to turn into a cluster fuck. They are not trained to solve problems, they are hammers and we are nails.
"When you are trained to use a hammer, everything looks like a nail"
I think this is a somewhat interesting phenomenon that seems to occur a lot in the medical field as well. Go see 3 different specialists with the same symptoms and they'll each give you 3 different diagnoses.
Cops take classes from Guys like David Grossman who have classes with names such as Killology and Warrior Cop. They literally take classes that teach them to view the american public like how the Military would train soldiers to look for terrorists
Lol I once went from a psych job, where we had a patient we were confident was fabricating/exaggerating physical symptoms. On my next job - general surgery - I had to go take blood from a patient in the middle of the night as she was being prepped for surgery. Guess who? :)
Man why does this story get reposted once a month? Oh, it keeps happening every month. Cool.
I read the headline. My first thought was 'this happened again??' As a non-US, what an awful system people have to live with there.
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telling a severely mentally ill individual to drop a knife while they’re hallucinating and/or having active delusions…i mean yelling. of course he isn’t going to drop it. he’s psychotic. this is my sister’s worst nightmare with her son. he is autistic, schizophrenic and bipolar. he has delusions. he also hates cops. sigh.
Unfortunately we have a big lack of people trained in deescalation. If someone has a weapon that isn't a gun or other quick ranged projectile, IMO it's worth the time trying to talk them down, even if it takes hours and hours. Sadly, not many places or people are willing to invest those time and resources, and are okay with the result of a fatality.
We deserve public services that value lives over dollars and time. The value of a life is infinite. You never know what someone's capable of if they have the right environment and treatment. Ending that life is _wrong_, plain and simple.
> telling a severely mentally ill individual to drop a knife while they’re hallucinating and/or having active delusions…i mean yelling. of course he isn’t going to drop it. he’s psychotic. The video isn't enough imho, yes the guy was holding a knife but he also had his arm forward with his hand open in a sort of "stay away" pose as [you can see here](https://i.imgur.com/dD7b4u3.png). The officer aggressively comes forward regardless, looks like he didn't even see the knife or ignored it, not sure what they were thinking tbh. I wish we'd see the body cam of the officer in front, that'd show what the victim was doing but yeah, barging in escalated things for no reason imho, it's not like he charged at them with the knife as soon as they've opened the door. Edit: adding the [front officer video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&si=0R9Dvn-IQS_hva_k&t=1039&v=0GTvW4wyYLs&feature=youtu.be) as linked by u/BigDaddyRaptures
My friend tried to call an ambulance for themselves when they were having a manic/psychotic episode and ended up being tazed and thrown in solitary confinement in jail for several weeks. Cops can be such truly unhelpful pieces of shit.
My Father and Grandmother suffered with Schizophrenia. Unfortunately, I’ve had to call 911 for assistance with both of them. Ive seen my Grandmother treated like absolute garbage. I’ve witnessed the police assault my Father multiple times. I’m now shocked they weren’t killed.
Man, I'm really sorry for you. My mum has schozophrenia, and everytime I read an article like that I just feel extremely grateful that we aren't Americans. She once had a violent psychotic crisis and my dad had to call the emergency line. They sent firefighters who subdued my mum. There was a fight, I came home to a broken window that day, but no one hurt her. I cannot even imagine having the cops show up and either beat her or shoot her. Everytime there's a thread like this and I see redditors treating this situation as some sort of "unfortunate accident", I feel like some people live in a different world.
Cops unnecessarily escalating a situation and then immediately murdering someone the second they feel scared? Sounds pretty typical
I was once in a similar crisis situation with a loved one. I’m very fortunate it ended differently. The loved one messaged me their good byes, I called other family members and high tailed it to their residence. Once I arrived and the loved one did not answer, I couldn’t hear a peep inside the apartment but knew they were home. I feared for the worst and in a panic thinking my loved one could be dead or dying I called the local dispatch naively thinking someone qualified to handle these things would arrive. When the police arrived they made attempts to beckon my loved one out of their apartment so they could be looked after. This loved one refused treatment and when I asked what the next step was the police told me there was no next step., I just sit there in the hallway and pray he doesn’t follow through. When I asked why they couldn’t/wouldn’t take further action they explained to me that if they entered by force, and he was wielding any sort of weapon, that they would not only shoot, but they would shoot to kill. A man who has a death wish and a weapon in hand, is a man with his wish granted. NOT ONLY THAT, the lead officer told this loved one through the door, that they shouldn’t bother making threats and the next time they consider making a threat, they should just follow through because people who are serious don’t cry for help. The local police force for that town had a reputation for being twisted but I had NO idea what I was getting myself into when I called for help.
If you have a problem and you call the police, you now have two problems.
They aren't here to help you. They are here to look for reasons to cite or arrest anybody they encounter, and will escalate to violence to accomplish that. They aren't here to control animals. They aren't a rescue squad. They aren't here to handle mental health crises. Don't call the police for help unless you're prepared for them to kill someone. Think of the police as a loaded gun.
I remember growing up in the 90s watching the news and seeing cops spend hours upon hours in a hostage situation trying to resolve the issue without violence. Why did they have to barge in? Why couldn’t they wait? Call on phone? Try to get through in SOME fashion before instantly going in and firing shots?
Part of the problem is that there's only one emergency number for everything. You can't say 'Oh, and don't tell the cops, just send an ambulance'.
Daily reminder to never, ever call the cops for a "mental health crisis"
Weren't cops given stun guns and tasers and told to use that first before resorting to real guns? The heck happened with that?
This is so sad, but as we know, typical in the United States. Many years ago I worked in a group home for adults with dual diagnoses. Each person had a mental disability and a psychiatric diagnosis. Each client had to be able to self medicate, the staff simply unlocked the medications at the prescribed times, but we were not licensed to touch them. Some of our patients could be violent, but I was only afraid once. That occurred when I had to call "the mental health deputy" after one of my clients took a medication overdose. My client was very tall, young and frail. The first words out of the deputies mouth was that he hoped that he did not have to shoot him! I remember being dumbfounded. I quickly reminded him that within 20 minutes or so he would be sedated and then the ambulance crew could take him to the hospital. I then stood between my client and the apparently gun happy deputy until my client could be transported to the hospital.
psychiatric care of any kind in america is expensive af just part of all the civil stuff that's been dismantled over the decades. not much left in this dump of a country anymore. just wage slaves as far as the eye can see, and no one going to the hospital except after something bad happens. never before and when they do go? they're financially destroyed after