America’s mental healthcare system in action.
That is what I was thinking. Many police shootings these days are of people who really should be in a mental health facility. I suspect this will be ruled justified, and based on the story so far that might be the case.
If you’re distressed or have an emergency, DO NOT call the POPo ffs, they only do death as a public service.
Why do cops have all that other shit on their belts and all over them when all they need is a holster?
Cameras, a really effective tool are not included, that’s convenient.
If we’re going to use cops as mental healthcare providers, you’d think we’d provide them some training other than “administer bullets as necessary to calm patient.” But, of course, no. Why would we do that?
If someone has a video of this mess on their phone DON"T release it until the Cops have said their full. Don’t let them tailor their story out of fear of what a video might show.
You do realize the average cop has fewer hours of required training than the average barber.
And the beat goes on…and the beat goes on.
Reagan’s Kids.
Agree that cameras should be mandatory for All LEOs.
Edit: Functioning cameras.
So, the stun gun didn’t work, ergo- shoot him? Why not just wait it out? Are cops trained at all to deal with the mentally ill? Did they talk to the sister?
I saw the picture of the man in the shooting stance and how close the officers were to him.
We don’t know what police thought when encountering this man. All of us default lately to thinking the need for lethal force is questionable, if not entirely inappropriate. But looking at this photo, were I faced with the person, I’d sure as hell think there was a possibility he might at any second squeeze off a round that could end my life. What were the police supposed to do? That man sure as hell looks like he’s in the classic shooting stance. What would you do with a split second to decide?
Agreed, the stance of the man and the proximity to the officer make this a very bad situation. I feel officers are reacting too quickly in many situations but this is not one of them. Even if the device being held was not a gun the position and posture deserve a response. Even though it wasn’t a gun there are a lot of devices or designs that can emit something nasty. It could be a bullet, or bullets, or dangerous materials.
BTW, TPM, the headline is clickbait. You’re better than this.
Agreed. This is a tough case. It’s hard to know everything when people immediately retreat to their corners and blame/defend.
No two shootings are created equal.
Think about how harmful it is for these witnesses to immediately come by and lie that he had his hands up and they shot him. If not for this picture, that would make the case very difficult and possibly result in criminal charges or discipline for the officers. And with the photo, now it calls into question witness testimony in cases where we don’t have physical or photographic evidence and there actually was a bad shooting!
Depends on the department. Of which we have 40,000. Some require only a high school diploma or GED. Some require a B.A. Some have a police academy that takes anywhere from a month to four or five months to complete.
One of the reasons you don’t see the kind of shit we see here in other countries–besides the guns–is because in most other countries cops are national government employees subject to national training standards and conduct governance. And nowhere else are many of them local elected officials whose sole qualification for office is getting the votes.
That’s not to say cops everywhere else are great or free of corruption. Nor does it mean that there aren’t sheriff departments that are superior forces (though usually as the result of a reformer succeeding a brute or a corrupt swine). But the inconsistency here means the lowest denominator gets the press.
As part of my job, I’m a Mental Health First Aid instructor. It’s like a CPR certification, except in the mental health world. On two occasions, I have given classes to local police departments. It is always a confrontational event, in the way that they are resistant to the training, because they’ve been trained differently (wrongly). So, a deprogramming, of sorts, has to take place. It never goes well. They see someone, for example, experiencing the symptoms of schizophrenia as a threat, and should be treated as such. This goes against everything MHFA is about. So, there is always a stalemate that occurs. So, you’re right. The police, more often than not, are not equipped with the proper empathy and training it takes to deal with this situation. Their training seems to dictate the mentally ill as a threat.
I think the guy that got shot also had some mental issues…you were talking about the trigger happy cops right?
“I just called you to help him, and you killed him.”
I wonder how many people are thinking of calling for help, and then putting down the phone out of fear the police will just escalate a bad situation.
The cops don’t want the job of being mental health care providers, and we shouldn’t ask them to do it.