Originally published at: Man called 911 for help during mental health crisis. The cops turned up and killed him. | Boing Boing
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While ACAB, I fear mental health is rapidly joining that fraternity, not the providers, but the ones who control access. I can’t think of a catchy acronym for that, but “bureaucrats suck” might cover it.
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When they say “defund the police” this is what they’re talking about: move money (no, conservatives, not all of it) from police budgets to social services budgets and send a trained mental health worker as the first responder instead of a cop.
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I fear the Police more than the general public.
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spiders, clowns, cops:
my nightmares are made of these.
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Agreed, but that hasn’t happened. It’s all there in the story - suicide by cop. Would that the police had better training to deal with situations like this. But I’m not sure how many social workers are prepared to jump into an armed-and-dangerous situation without the police there to protect them.
We can do better. But really defund the police should be fund them more - more training - more crisis intervention teams to deal with situations like this. In the end, we’ve all been taught to call 911.
That said, when a homeless man started hitting my car windows at a red light - I called the police because there wasn’t a mental health line to call.
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Real life experience has taught some of us to avoid calling the police even if we are the victims.
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Suicide by Social Worker a common thing where you’re from?
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Police departments have been getting more and more funding over the years. They don’t care and would rather spend their money on military equipment, take their budget away and give it to another group that does not have a desire to murder civilians. Period.
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And when they do spend money on training, it’s on “warrior mentality“ training that makes everyone else an enemy combatant in their eyes.
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The canned response from the Portland police will be “the officers acted according to their training”. To which I have always replied “then fire the officers AND the trainers, and get non-lethal training!”
How hard would it be for police officers to train in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and learn to subdue, not kill, people? There have to be many UFC washouts who would like to put their skills to practical use as well.
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clowns are just misunderstood, they don’t get enough credit for doing highly dangerous and necessary work, and they deserve our unquestioning support. everybody hates clowns and lawyers until they really need one.
[note: i am not referring to icp clowns, they are bizarre antisocial freaks]
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Throwing even more money at an institution with serious cultural problems. American policing is still mired in a militarised “warrior” mindset that treats “civilians” (especially marginalised and racialised one) as hinderances at best and enemy combatants at worst. American society has enabled that not only through ever-increasing funding (at the behest of the only unions right-wingers actually like) and protections like qualified immunity. More training and more money are not going to overcome the first instinct of the police to use the state’s monopoly on violence (and lethal violence at that) as a solution to any problem they encounter.
Diverting some of the money that already goes to the police toward social workers and medical first-responders (and the training of 911 dispatchers to assess whether it’s the cops who always need to be called first, and/or setting up a separate line as has been done with 311) is the better solution while all those “bad apples” in police departments are rooted out and the old rotten barrel is burned and re-built.
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Geez, given your place of residence, I can hardly imagine how you deal.
There’s like spiders including jumping spiders everywhere in Florida:
Or are the Keys exempted somehow?
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They’d have to be in shape to do that.
Much easier to just use a gun when you’re a fatty with an authority complex.
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they can’t get me out on the water!
that, and I avoid going into the mangrove thicks. there’s things in there!
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The number of situations in which calling the cops actually helps anything is tiny.
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There are lots of problems that police aren’t trained for, but they’ll take a shot at it.
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I’m trying to recall the last situation I was involved in at any level where the cops were called and it was the right decision… gotta be one, apart from thefts that required a police report in order to file a claim, but I’m drawing a blank.
Oh yeah, the time me and my girlfriend both had the pleasure of staring at the wrong end of a 12 guage shotgun in the convenience store where we both worked. A store that was six blocks from the cop shop, on the same street, where you couldn’t stand outside for ninety seconds without seeing three cop cars speed past. Took ten minutes to get a cop there that quiet Tuesday night.
Get thee over to RedBubble.
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