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this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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We had this happen in my town a couple weeks ago. Cop got called for a mental health check because a 19year old with a knife was acting erratic. Cop pulls up and gets out the car, the kid runs at him yelling "shoot me! Shoot me! Shoot me!" so the cop pulled out his gun and shot him. Didn't go for the tazer or the his mace, just right to deadly force despite being called over specifically to prevent the kid from dying.
Cops should neve, under any circumstances, be called in for a mental episode. All they will do is escalate the situation and cause harm.
The family didn't call the cops in this case. They called a mental health crisis team, and that team called the cops due to the presence of a weapon.
At the same time you can call social services and you end up with them being dead instead because someone having a psychotic episode slashed/shot them...
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes, you can now take the time to go two replies down for a bunch of examples
That sounds absurd. Please provide one example of that happening.
It's absurd to think that never happens. It's not absurd to think that doesn't happen as often as cops killing someone.
I never claimed it never happened. It's just not something I ever recall hearing of. I spent 20 years in the medical industry and a few of those in the mental health space. I've heard of a lot of violence on mental health professionals but the characterization that the people I replied to didn't fit with my understanding. I haven't made it through all the articles but I'm still not convinced it's a thing that happens enough to consider it anything but rare.
Kind of implies that you think it never happens...
https://youthtoday.org/2023/02/murdered-on-the-job-a-year-after-a-child-welfare-investigator-was-killed-little-has-changed/
https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/mobile/we-re-not-giving-up-friends-of-social-worker-killed-on-the-job-continue-calls-for-justice-1.4783551
https://people.com/teri-zenner-social-worker-murdered-widower-honors-memory-7557328
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/01/09/social-workers-field-safety-remains-concern-after-killing/
https://vancouversun.com/news/crime/b-c-ministry-of-children-and-family-development-worker-shot-to-death-in-prince-rupert
Yeah, social workers are never put in danger, right?
Cherry picking data does not a compelling argument make.
According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics in 2022 the total number of deaths for community and social services in the US was... 19. (That's on page 8, in case you want to check.)
I found a CBS article from 2017 that cited another BLS study which said that social workers were the 20th most dangerous job category in the US, with a fatality rate of 1 per 100,000 people. That's fewer deaths than architects and engineers, which was the 19th deadliest job.
On the other hand, American police have killed more than 1000 people every year for the past ten years. To put that another way, the police killed more people last year than social workers died of job-related causes in the past decade.
It's really funny that by almost every metric you can think of, policing in the US is systemically flawed and needs major oversight.
You should compare the number per 100k for the people killed by the police if you want to make a comparison that makes sense
1000 out of 330 000 000, that's 0.3 per 100k, looks like police officers are less deadly to the population than the population is to social workers!
Also very funny that you would accuse me of cherry picking data when only situations where officers kill people during mental health checks get reported on, right?
So you're trying to normalize your ass-pulled estimate of the entire population of the US to compare it to the normalized full-time equivalent workers (which obviously isn't the entire US population)? You can understand why using people who had no interactions with the police would be an inaccurate comparison, right?
My dude, until you get a better understanding of statistics I'm not going to engage with you further.
Ass pulled estimate of the US population... I mean, the number is easy to find my dude if you want to confirm it.
Not all social workers get in contact with people suffering a mental breakdown while armed either, how is that relevant to the situation then?
Interesting that all these are Canadian stories
Didn't know Illinois and Kansas are Canadian provinces... Also I'm in Canada so not surprising that Google would provide Canadian results for the most part.
https://vtdigger.org/2023/04/04/woman-killed-at-brattleboro-shelter-identified-as-social-worker-case-upped-to-1st-degree-murder/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/11/boy-stand-trial-murder-sheffield-social-worker-marcia-grant
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/it-keeps-her-alive-friends-family-celebrate-life-of-social-worker-kille/
It doesn't happen because the social workers call the police, the paramedics call the police, the fire department calls the police...
The police are the catch all for emergency situations. "I don't know what's happening, send the police" is pretty standard practice.
There are some police departments with salaried social workers and "community specialist" officers that are employed explicitly to deal with issues like this. The problem is that a change to law enforcement in this direction must come directly from each individual community and must be supported by those in charge of the local department.
Yea I'm gonna have to disagree with you hard on this one. Just because you dislike police or have had bad experiences does not mean you should let someone having a crisis subject others around them to a very real possibility of imminent danger because "cops bad".
Do police need more training? Sure. Do they need major reform in many areas? Of course. But are they all bad? No.
The mere presence of a cop, even without a visible weapon, will escalate any situation regarding mentally unstable people. Period.
If you don't understand why a person going through a crisis would freak out when a figure of (ultimately violent) power appears right after they picked a weapon you have a serious problem with basic empathy.
For the record, I haven't had any bad experiences with cops, in fact every interaction I've had so far has been either neutral or actually pretty nice. I've had my fair share of breakdowns as a teenager tho, and I can assure you that a cop would've never helped a single time. Even the nicest one.
Look at the report for this case, for example:
Here's the singular question:
What was the rush?
They needed to take him in, but they are afraid of him acting erratic and wielding a knife.
Why the fuck do they push to enter the building? There was no one in there. He could not hurt anyone while he remained hold up inside other than himself.
Why couldn't they just wait him out?
By pushing to resolve the situation immediately and forcing their way in, they *exacerbated the situation.
I think they should have been called, but they should be there as backup in case someone is getting attacked. But no one was in danger here until they entered. There was no reason to push this. All they did was create a reason to kill him in self defense.
You missed the options of using "less lethal" force as well, why go for live ammo immediately?
Because when someone is rushing at you with a deadly weapon, you may only get one shot, and not all 'less lethal' options are effective, especially on someone in a mental health crisis.
I agree that the cops never should have entered the premises in the first place, but in this instance they did and the victim had already been a direct threat to others. This one instance really isn't a case of cops murdering an innocent person for absolutely no reason.
That really depends on how you look at it. They did murder an innocent person exactly because they made the wrong decision to engage in the first place. You can't put yourself in harms way when it isn't necessary then blame the danger you knew about in advance.
My opinion would be different if there was someone else in the apartment for them to defend, but there wasn't.
The cops made a bad call and now someone is dead.
One of my biggest complaints with police and why things escalate unnecessarily is because they are fucking impatient. They give "orders" and if you don't comply immediately you are met with force.
They are insecure, poorly educated bullies. Everything makes sense once you realize this about police in the US.
In my town having gone and served in Afghanistan basically allowed you to become a cop once you returned states side. No degree or special training needed.
TBF, I'd rather a soldier show up at my door than a cop. At least soldiers are usually better trained in discipline, situational awareness, and appropriately evaluating threats. They are also trained on rules of engagement and usually aren't terrified about every single engagement they find themselves in.
Maybe our police would be better if they received the same level of training as soldiers. And maybe that's it. Soldiers are more confident in their abilities because they've received adequate training.
Dude a soldier in this case is a 20 year old grunt that joined at 18. You're not getting 30 year old officers joining the cop force.
1 good cop isn't gonna stop the other 20 from shooting your family and pets.
Exactly how much training do you think someone needs to not unload a gun on someone within 10 seconds of seeing them? Somehow every other non-cop present managed to not use him for target practice.
The bastard in question is even a repeat offender:
Cops are bastards because the non-bastards either get fired, harassed out, or murdered. Being nice to people while you turn a blind eye to the shit your coworkers do is still being a bastard.
According to the report, the dude had already attacked a mental health worker with the knife. Yeah, it sucks that they were in a mental health crisis, but they were absolutely a threat to others.
The cops absolutely should have been there, but they should have only been there protecting the mental health workers instead of entering the premises and confronting him. .
That’s interesting, because it’s not what the health worker said.
Also of note is that his father disputes that even that happened: