Well, at least they don’t appear to have doctored the evidence, as they did with this schizophrenic man shot 23 times by the police (and none even got a slap on the wrist):
In WV, shooting a crazy guy 23 times doesn’t qualify as excessive force. It’s my understanding that they claimed he had a gun, but when none was found they changed it to a “knife.”
Mental heath facilities suck. The expensive ones, like the Hartford Institute For The Living or Brattleboro Retreat, which I have spend about a year total when I was 16 to 17 in, simply is to keep mental patients drugged on Thorozine (found out I was allergic to it when they dosed me in Brattleboro) or Haldol (makes Thorozine look like a walk in the park) and house you till your money runs out.
The state run facilities that I have spent over a year in, are overrun and generally do a better job of helping people than the private for-profit ventures. Still, it is much like jail (of which I have spent about nine months in for crimes from DUI to assault with intent) and in some cases the state run mental facilities are worse than at least one jail I’ve been in (had a pool table on the unit for Christ’s sake).
In my opinion, none of the doctors at the for profit mental facilities cared about patients at all. In the state run facilities, some of the doctors actually cared. I have been fortunate enough to have two doctors there care about me, and comfort my mother when I had my major break into schizo-affective disorder, a variant of schizophrenia where the patient goes into schizo episodes and comes back out. The doctors said I was the worse case they had ever seen and they doubted I would come back. I did, and I credit a lot of that to my atheist upbringing, so I was able to get away from God in my episode and come back to reality.
A lot of these people don’t want help, because it is like jail. The medication is a pain in the ass to remember to take every day too. Thankfully, I get a once a month shot of Invega, a Risperdal variant, which makes it easy for me to take my medication, which I know I need to avoid another episode.
Sorry for the rambling, I just felt I needed to write here.
What’s the world coming to when cops can’t even shoot vagrants for sport? Goddamm pinko commie liberals are ruining this country.
In the UK the guidelines for the firearms unit are:
Must identify themselves and declare intent to fire (unless this risks serious harm).
Should aim for the biggest target (the torso) to incapacitate and for greater accuracy.
Should reassess the situation after each shot.
The difference of course is that to qualify to be in the firearms unit you have to have served in the regular police force, who don’t carry guns, for at least two years, and the firearms unit is generally only called in when the danger to regular police officers is too great. (eg. the suspects have firearms themselves, which is rare in the UK due to the lack of easy access to firearms outside of hunting/sport and the knowledge that the firearms unit will always out-escalate you)
I have been in a state-run mental health facility for about 4 months when I was 15. This happened in Finland, so the experiences might differ. I honestly wasn’t that happy about staying there at the time, because I felt it did nothing to help my social anxiety, general anxiety, depression and Aspergers. But they didn’t just drug the patients and leave them like that; there were many activities, different sort of therapies, exercise and so on; they had their own gym and a pool table and an amazing beach right next to it with a sauna. So I think that mental health facilities can be incredibly helpful for certain people. My sister, who has also been diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder (and god knows what else - they can never decide), has spent a lot of time at these places, and they can be helpful, as long as the goal is to get the people out of there to live a normal life, not keep them in like prisoners with no future.
I had watched that video when it first came out and yes, indeed, it’s sickening.
But something I just noticed: the two guys up the hill had clear shots at the guy, but the guy from whose perspective the video is being shot is shooting right past the two guys (I’ll accept there might be some distortion from the lens). That in itself shows a pretty ridiculous loss of control there. You’ve got two guys who have a clear shot, but shooter number three puts his partners at risk by getting in on the action? That’s just so gratuitous. Your buddies are shooting so you are going to take a few shots, too, just because? That’s awfully bad training.
I hope they spend a long, long time in jail.
Well, people are locked up at the state facilities for being a danger to themselves or others. The place I have spent most of my time that is a state facility, here in Charlotte, NC, has two units. One is a complete lock down with the most dangerous patients. That is not a fun place to be. The second unit is for those that are getting ready to be released and is more lax in its security. Either way, you are not allowed outside except to the recreation area that is a small fenced in area right outside the edge of the hospital. for about an hour a day. There were two TVs on the second unit, but not much to read except women’s magazines, and a few books. I read all of the National Geographics that they had, =)
I have a feeling that there are a lot more “dangerous to others” in the US than Finland, and that is why you have such lax security. I’m not trying to insult you here, BTW.
I don’t know what the answer is. Personally, I love my once a month shot of Invega that does not allow me to skip or stop doses. Bottom line is that the state hospitals are like jails, but better than the private for-profit hospitals, as the state wants to integrate you into society and the private facilities just want to suck all the money out of you.
We also have our facilities divided into two parts; one for those who are either a real danger to themselves or others, and one for other patients. The patients in the tight security area are not allowed outside either and they have very restricted policies about what they can do. So it’s not that different. I also don’t see why we would have less dangerous patients in Finland than in the US .- I mean, obviously we have a smaller population, but proportionally speaking, I see no reason why we would have less serious cases,
I just think that we treat out patients a little more humanely. The goal is always integration into society. We have no private facilities here, it’s all run by the government. And I’m glad of all the support and money I’ve gotten so I can become a good, tax-paying citizen. Hurray for socialism?
Well, the USA has a higher rate of murder than Finland, almost three times the rate. I’m just saying that violent crime is much more prevalent in the USA than Finland, so I extrapolate that there are more violent mental health patients in the USA.
I should have said more violent mental health patients per capita in the USA than Finland, so by per capita the mental health facilities have proportionally more violent patients.
Original thread here. I wonder if Mr Cat_Shannon will grace us with his wisdom and insight once again.
Just read that. And now I get my first “christ, what an asshole.” I get his “guys with knives are dangerous and can cover ground quick” screed, but yeah, this is not that.
If it is to change it probably won’t be up to them, according to something I read yesterday the APD is so problem plagued, particularly with shooting people, that they were forced into federal oversight of some kind and are getting a shakeup.
Could amount to nothing tho, like most local police oversight commissions do, they being federalis may not mean shit
There are a lot of cultural factors behind the higher violent crime rates in the US. Failure to properly treat mental illness is one of those factors.
Well, that’s one of the emotions that leads one to breath hard behind a camera, but there are others…
@IronEdithKidd really said it well:
I agree with you @johnphantom that things are probably worse in American insitutes. But when I talked about how mental health treatment is handled in Finland, I was just triýing to point out that it could be better. It can be done in a more humane way. Sadly, that’s not the case in America right now, and I don’t really have high hopes that it’s gonna change anytime soon.
My guess is it’s because they just climbed an upslope on the hill where that guy was camping.
They didn’t seem all that excited to me. Listening to them talk after, it’s like they were discussing how to change the toner in the copy machine. Just another day at the office.
Just some time would be a pleasing start, given the normal outcome…
Perhaps we should quit providing the mentally ill with guns and badges.
Cops demand criminals get harsher punishment when a cop is attacked, harsher then when a criminal attacks a civilian. The same should apply when cops commit crimes - in fact, they should get an even harsher punishment, since cops are entrusted to know and uphold the law.
A message needs to be sent to cops across the US that crimes committed by cops are worse than crimes committed by other criminals. The death penalty is still on the books in Arizona.
Execution is the solution.
