As if race is not a hard enough thing for the police to wrap their heads around, if you’re mentally ill, black AND acting irrationally, it seems you have even less of a chance to survive. The latest victim is Anthony Hill, a black 27-year-old veteran who was bipolar. Police were responding to calls that he was naked and disoriented, wandering around his apartment complex:
The shooting on Monday occurred amid a national debate over race, crime and law enforcement officers’ use lethal force in encounters with civilians. Mr. Hill was black, and the officer who shot him is white, Mr. Alexander said. It was not clear what had led the officer to shoot Mr. Hill. Mr. Alexander said that the officer had been equipped with a Taser, but that he did not know whether the officer had used the device. The shooting was the third fatal police shooting since Friday of a black man who was or appeared to be unarmed.
Team Blackness also discussed a racist letter from the University of Texas frat Phi Gamma Delta, the Memphis police department’s interesting way of handling black cops that bring up racism, and a 10-year-old math genius.
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Villago Delenda Est
It seems to me that cops are not being trained to deal with these situations in any sort of non-violent, caring manner at all. It’s lock and load and lord help you if you’re down range.
I’m thinking, more and more, that we need some national standards for peace officer training that includes a lot of skull work that all too many of the current uniformed force is not capable of engaging in. If we want a professional law enforcement community, we’re going to have to do several things, to include: no longer hire cops on the cheap, create a set of stringent standards that are adhered to, and adequately fund police departments to do these things.
Unfortunately, there simply are not enough rational people voting in the right politicians to get these things done. They want it on the cheap, they don’t care if a few bodies are piled up in the process, and they don’t want their prejudices challenged in any way.
Betty Cracker
@Villago Delenda Est: You’ve correctly identified the problem, the solution and the reasons the issue will almost certainly not be addressed for a generation at least. Bravo.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est:
Does anyone call them this anymore? They should.I only hear “police officers” “cops” and “law enforcement officers.” The concept of enforcing the peace seems to have been lost.
Villago Delenda Est
@Betty Cracker: Depressing, isn’t it?
This is not an insoluble problem. But in the current political climate, it certainly seems that way.
Tone in DC
Many B-J commenters frequently bring up the pants-soiling nature of so many Murkans.
This rant like substance falls under the category of No Shit.
The epidemic of police violence has some of its roots in that late summer Tuesday in 2001, when so many of us were pretty much shaken to our core by 19 suicide bombers without explosives.
The sad thing is, over ten years later, many US Americans (and such as) are still utterly, irretrievably fearful, paranoid and xenphobic. Not just toward the Other, but damn near everything and nearly everyone. That might explain that idiot who called the cops on that man Crawford in that Walmart last year.
The cops are no less tribal, no less scared than so many folks out here. I just wish the cops would stop covering up their fear and tribal nature with spray and pray tactics.
end rant
Tommy
God I fear for my country. The poor man was biploar. He needed help. And a vet that was only 27, so much of his life in front of him. I so hope that if I or you had a mental illness, we were maybe off our meds, manic, whatever, we’d be offered the help we needed and not shot dead.
Mike J
@Tone in DC:
No. Cops have always been like this. It’s not like they ramped up the violence when they got an excuse. They don’t need an excuse because nothing happens to them.
Violet
@Tommy: If you’re white, and since you’re white, you have a much better chance of that than a black person does.
Tree With Water
From the NY Times obituary of the late (caucasian) criminologist and police office John McNamara:
“..Writing in academic journals and mainstream newspapers, he was among the first to question the growing use of military hardware by local police departments, nearly two decades before the armored police response to protests in Ferguson, Mo., this summer over the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer.
He blamed the drug war for instilling a military mind-set in police departments, saying it undermined community policing.
“Simply put,” he wrote in a 2006 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, “the police culture in our country has changed. An emphasis on ‘officer safety’ and paramilitary training pervades today’s policing.”
Police work would always be dangerous, he wrote, “but this isn’t Iraq.”
McNamara was so well respected that despite his plain spoken common sense, he was nonetheless hired by the Hoover Institute after retiring from his career in law enforcement. Don’t tell me the American people won’t be receptive to an overhaul of drug laws and drug enforcement. The time is upon us to begin, or rather, it’s long overdue.
Violet
@Mike J: Agreed. It’s always been this way. And we know about it more now because of everyone has a camera and/or there are surveillance cameras all over the place, plus social media makes it easy for clips to go viral and get attention.
You think stuff like this wasn’t happening in the 1950’s in the south? If you do, I have plenty of bridges for sale….
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think part of it is the post 9-11 fervor that our police forces are the front line in terror prevention even if they are in places beyond unlikely to ever be targeted. I’ve also noticed that for probably 30 years at least the police departments are being outfitted in military equipment. I saw a story a week or so ago about seven towns in Southern Maine that are getting MRAPs. Why? Is there some kind of imminent clam digger revolt I should know about?
I’m sick about what happened to Anthony Hall. He should never have been killed when there were so many other options available to provide him with help. Don’t get me started about what goes wrong with resource officers in schools.
We have to get a handle on this insanity of over policing.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tone in DC: When the 9-11 attacks happened, I knew we were in deep shit of our own making.
Mainly because so many cannot separate themselves from the event and ask “why did this happen?” They refuse to see the world in any way but the way they see it, and this is where they fail. Understanding what your enemy does is not the same as siding with your enemy…far from it. You have to learn about your enemy in order to find your enemy’s weakness, and exploit that.
Our enemies certainly know what buttons to push to get us to dance to their tune.
patrick II
It seems cops use tasers when they should do nothing and use guns when they should use tasers.
Tommy
@Violet: And that is why I fear for my nation. That being white, and I so know this is true, I get advantages people of color do not. NOT ACCEPTABLE. If I live into my 90s as most in my family do, I as a white male will be a minority in this country. I welcome that.
But what I say is I hope when that happens those in the “new” majority treat me better than we treated them.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est: I remember loads of classes being taught on “Why they hate us.” Seriously. That was the framing. Not, “Why did they do what they did?” It was all about how They Hate Us For Our Freedumbs (TM).
PurpleGirl
If the police officer had used his taser, the man might have been tased repeatedly. He might have died from the tasing. From the number of bad tasing incidents in past years it seems that no one fully explains the results of tasing to the police officers to get tasers.
Tasers create a storm in the brain. A person being tased can not respond, he/she is unable to move for several seconds to several minutes. This has led to the taser being used repeatedly, which only compounds and worsens the brain storm. The issue isn’t the pain caused, it’s that the brain storm prevents a person from responding. And the police officer takes that non-response as something being done deliberately. Yes, tasers were developed to be “non-lethal” but cops don’t really understand how a taser acts.
I’m against the use of tasers by anyone with the knowledge of how a taser affects the brain and central nervous system.
JCJ
@Villago Delenda Est:
This is the fear I had when my wife was to the point of needing hospitalization when she was psychotic. In Milwaukee a man suffering from schizophrenia was shot 14 (!) times recently. All witnesses stated he had tried to grab the cop’s baton, but why shoot let alone 14 times? That video last year while protests were going on in Ferguson of the two cops unloading into a clearly mentally ill man was sickening.
Another problem is if a person is suffering from a mental illness and is arrested but hits a cop in the process of being detained the patient might be charged. I had a patient I had treated for lymphoma who suffered from schizophrenia. A few years later he was in a psychotic state. He hit a cop who came to detain him and the patient was subsequently charged with and convicted of a crime. When my wife was detained once the police considered charging her since she resisted them.
Violet
@Tommy: Don’t understand how that makes you afraid for the country. Seems like the country turning less white could be a good thing, given that white people are awful to non-white people.
What are you afraid of for the country, as opposed to being afraid of for yourself personally?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Violet:
Not when it comes to mentally ill people, unfortunately. White mentally ill people are killed by the cops all the time. Kelly Thomas, who was brutally beaten to death by cops here in So Cal, was white:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Kelly_Thomas
Non mentally ill black people are at higher risk of being killed by cops than non mentally ill white people, but the numbers are much closer when mental illness is in the mix, and mentally ill people of all races/ethnicities are at a very high risk of being killed in a police encounter.
Violet
@PurpleGirl: Maybe all police officers who use tasers should go through the experience of being tased. Just so they understand how it works.
WaterGirl
@patrick II: I was raised with the belief that if a police officer felt the need to use a weapon… they had already lost control of the situation, which was considered a failure on the officer’s part.
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: Police need better training. Heck they should be paid more. You have to learn to tone down a situation that can turn violent. I would argue that is like the police officers #1 job.
Arclite
Well, everyone knows walking naked while black is a capital offense.
PurpleGirl
@Violet: There have been a few cases where cops have tried it. But they always note that they didn’t feel PAIN. I’ve not seen a case written up where the cop mentions the paralysis. The machine was designed to case paralysis. Pain isn’t that relevant.
jl
I don’t have time to go through all the comments, but if they guy was naked, not sure what ‘appeared to be unarmed’ means?
I saw a clip of some armed gun nut walking while packing next to a school, and ranting like a lunatic at some officers. They humored the guy until he went away. Guess what color he was.
Maybe time the UN issued a stern report on us for human rights violations. Be a long time before the US Govt issues one for the whole country, as opposed to one city that gets caught red handed. Maybe we deserve sanctions, but won’t happen since we would veto them.
Another Holocene Human
Right so I used to live in a small complex full of grad students and people on disability. This adult who was mentally ill was dumped there by his family and ignored. He went off his meds or whatever precipitated a meltdown and ran into the parking lot naked, screaming, and wielding a kitchen knife. He sortied from the east building to make a frontal assault on the west building.
The northwest tenants panicked and one ran into their apartment and came out wielding an ax to keep McCrazy at bay. The cops showed up in force after literally receiving about 9 simultaneous 911 calls.
He was safely taken into custody, Baker acted, and his family contacted. Nobody got so much as a scratch.
Our complex was mixed race but McCrazy looked like a full moon when he showed us the moon–if you know what I mean (and I think you do).
jl
@Arclite:
” Well, everyone knows walking naked while black is a capital offense. ”
A capital ‘manner of walking’ felony?
Violet
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Of course people with mental illness are killed more often by police. Here’s a summary article from the guy who runs Fatal Encounters.
I’m curious where you’re getting your the data for your assertion that “the numbers are much closer when mental illness is in the mix.” From the article, it seems like the data is not really available:
Tommy
@Violet: You are so missing my point. I am fearful for how hateful this nation seems to be. I welcome a much more multi-cultural nation. Welcome it with open arms.
There is a story I have told here. My family came here in 1887 from Scotland. Pretty sure we didn’t have any “papers.” That person that came here in a single lifetime got elected as a Judge after digging coal and laying rails. This nation has been so good to us.
I want to be crystal clear here, we became doctors, lawyers, architects, PhDs.
I wish/want that for others here. I don’t care the color of your skin. I don’t even care how you got here. If you want to work for this nation, provide for your family, I could care less how you got here. I will welcome you with open arms.
Betty Cracker
The fact that we’re ass-deep in guns is another issue that contributes to overreaction by cops. It’s also a problem that won’t be going away anytime soon.
Tone in DC
@Mike J:
I said it has SOME of its roots in that late summer day. Not, by any stretch, can all or even most of our national epidemic of cop violence be traced to September 11th. The cops didn’t just start going off on people 15 years ago.
Your point is taken, definitely. I think that day definitely made it worse, though.
Violet
@Tommy: This nation has always been hateful. Nothing new. Salem witch trials. Slavery. KKK. Anti-suffragette violence. “”No Irish Need Apply.”
Don’t understand why you’re more “fearful for this nation” now, if hatefulness is your reason for fear. Other things maybe–climate change, plutocrats controlling the government–but hatefulness? Nothing new.
Tone in DC
@Villago Delenda Est:
Can’t argue with that.
Sad thing is, far too many people in positions of authority have that condition you describe. Their POV is exactly as you say.
Litlebritdifrnt
OT but I fear that I am doomed. A three legged cat showed up at my front door over the weekend. I thought I was seeing things but she was there this morning. She is a cute little thing, scrawny obviously, and has a bit of mange, but otherwise as sweet as can be, let me scratch behind her ears and everything while she ate from the food bowl that I leave out for the feral colony. It doesn’t appear that her leg is gone because of an accident or an attack, rather it looks like she might have been born without it. How the hell she ended up at my front door is anybody’s guess. I am hoping that I can coax her inside. (Did I just say that?) Like I said, I am doomed.
Doug r
@Villago Delenda Est: Possibly equipping some of the force with non lethal weapons and actual negotiating skills?
D58826
I’m really anxious to hear the police/DA explain where this poor man was hiding the weapon that so scared the police office.
jl
@Tommy: If your ancestors came here in 1887, they didn’t need any papers to reside here. Maybe had to convince somebody coming off the boat that they were not prostitutes or criminals or insane, which I assume was a low bar for vast majority. They had to get some papers to vote in federal elections, but in many places did not need them for state and local elections if they simply stayed in one place long enough.
Any society, with any mix of races or ethnicities or religions, or even slightly different cultures, or economic classes, can get up plenty of hate of one group for another. I don’t see how the very artificially defined Census Bureau definitions tipping one way or another will change that.
But, I think one of the points of the civil rights movement was to tamp down on the hate and misunderstanding, in addition to getting everybody their rights.
Tone in DC
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Heh, indeed. ;-)
If she’s a Maine Coon like a certain West By God Virginian feline we all know and love, she’ll shortly be eating you out of house and home, purring like a poorly maintained chainsaw the whole time. And, from what you mentioned, it’ll be more than worth it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tommy: YOU might argue that, but in much of the country, not just Ferguson, their #1 job is to bring in revenue in the form of fines and citations. And civil forfeitures.
Villago Delenda Est
@Doug r: Yeah, I know. Crazy talk.
wasabi gasp
Not seeing the relevance of the alleged mental illness.
Eric U.
I recently saw something that disappointed me on a hobby forum. A guy had asked for another poster’s address so he could send him something. This is a forum known for selfless sharing of fairly valuable tools. The recipient almost didn’t give the address because he was suspicious, “I’m a retired cop.” What a way to go through life.
srv
This country doesn’t care about mental health – just treating the symptoms with guns.
Think I’m going to give up on House of Cards – it’s looking more and more like a platform buy someone (the writers?) to sell conservative ideas, anti-union, anti-SS, anti-medicaid, Dems as conspiring evil pricks or dofuses and smart Republican leaders.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Also, I’m sure BellaQ will have better information than I do, but there are a lot of racial disparities in diagnosis that cause problems. African-Americans are misdiagnosed as schizophrenics at pretty scary rates when they actually have major depression with psychotic episodes or bipolar, so they aren’t getting the right treatment in the first place.
Violet
@jl: Tommy’s ancestors were also allowed to come here in 1887 because they were white and presumably of “good moral character.” That was not changed until 1952 when the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, also known as the McCarran–Walter Act, was passed.
PurpleGirl
@wasabi gasp: It is very relevant: The Mr. Hill was nude, roaming around talking loudly (probably incoherently) and he reportedly rushed at the cop. The cop probably thought the man would knock him down or hurt him in some other manner.
If he was naked, yeah, where/what was the weapon?
Mandalay
@Tone in DC:
Here is a golden example of a cop being scared: a police chief in GA has just resigned after he took his gun to bed with him, then shot his wife while they were both asleep:
The wife is now paralyzed from the waist down, and of course no charges were filed. I guess they decided that she has “suffered enough already”.
MomSense
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Doomed alright! Best cats I’ve ever had (most of my cats actually) showed up at my doorstep looking sick and scrawny.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Tommy: He needed medical treatment, not “help.” The brain is an organ of the body, and “mental health” is physical health. An important step in reducing stigma – and increasing safety for people who live with brain disorders – is careful use of language.
The man was ill; these illnesses are physical, and treatable to an extent. They are frequently fatal, and law enforcement needs a great deal more training to avoid being part of that fatality cycle. That training is happening – I’ve participated in some of it – but too slowly, and not widely enough. It’s expensive to send officers to training, even when it’s offered free of cost, because it’s time off the streets and, generally, on the clock.
BubbaDave
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I for one welcome your new feline overlord.
gvg
@Violet: the Irish were not originally considered white nor of good moral character. The Italians and several others that are now considered “white” each had several generations of problems first. Remember Jews were turned away before WWII to our regret.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Violet:
There are not very good statistics, but it appears that at least half of the people shot by police are mentally ill:
http://www.alternet.org/why-are-cops-shooting-so-many-mentally-ill-people
To be more precise, I should probably say that, going by media stories, a mentally ill white person’s chances of being killed by police seem to be fairly close to those of a non mentally ill black person. People with the double whammy of being both black and mentally ill are at higher risk than both of the other groups.
ET
Again I can’t help think that police training is falling way, way down. They guy was naked and so clearly not hiding a weapon and he could still inflict damage without one so that was an issue. Trying to subdue what had to have been a man obviously in mental distress would be something that would require more than one officer, shouldn’t the officer have called for back up so that there was another officer to assist? This just screams bad decision making process with fear of the big scary guy.
Are the police so scared that going for the gun is option number one? If so they don’t need to be officers.
tednacious multrenz
those ugly ass urkel x podcasters don’t give a fuck about this issue. they don’t give a fuck about zambrano-montes. they only give a fuck about themselves.. they are pimping bullshit because they failed at life and they want to make whites feel guilty because they are losers. they have gotten their share of time attention money and sympathy from white people. they dont deserve any more.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@ET:
From what I’ve heard, current police training is to demand compliance from the suspect, and to shoot to kill if you don’t get compliance. For obvious reasons, this leads to people who are unable to comply being killed — not just mentally ill people, but also people having a diabetic crisis, people with concussions or head injuries, etc.
Violet
@gvg: Indeed the definition of “white” has always been fluid.
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Yeah, that’s pretty much what the article I linked above indicated. Mental illness, male and black is the worst combination for an encounter with the police.
jl
@Violet: Thanks. I didn’t know US citizenship was restricted to ‘free white’ immigrants. IANAL or historian, but I think anyone could reside here if they could get here and were not obviously criminal or insane (Edit: until late 19th century when some exclusion acts were passed). There were laws controlling who could become US citizens and/or vote in federal elections, and what the process way, and I didn’t know that there restrictions by race.
wasabi gasp
@PurpleGirl: Do cops get a heads up on a suspects medical history before a call? I don’t know. Even if the info was available, what kind of consideration should that be given during a perceived threatening situation?
jl
@wasabi gasp: I mentioned it a few weeks ago, but I know there is a special training program for city police departments in Northern California on how to respond to calls involving an emotionally or mentally disturbed or ill person. I can’t remember the name of it. I haven’t seen any reports on how effective it is at changing things.
Mike J
@wasabi gasp:
How much history do you need on the naked guy babbling incoherently?
Violet
@jl: Yeah, the United States of America doesn’t like talking about that part of our history. We’re a “nation of immigrants” not a nation of “white immigrants who came by choice and others who came by force until 1952 when things started to change.” Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Violet:
My point was that, as with most of these intersectional problems, you can’t solve the overall problem by fixing only one piece. Even if we woke up tomorrow and the police were treating black and white people equally, the only thing that would mean for this situation is that mentally ill people would be getting killed on a racially equal basis.
Violet
@wasabi gasp:
That depends on who is doing the calling. As I’ve commented here before, we’ve got a woman with mental illness living in our neighborhood. Every so often she goes off her meds or she runs out or something and she gets worse. She wanders around the neighborhood half dressed, trailing a filthy blanket and talking to herself. Neighbors had to call the cops a year or two ago when she got worse and was beating a stop sign with a large sized tree limb and telling the stop sign she was going to kill it.
I ended up calling the cops at that time because her beating the stop sign with the tree limb was kind of scary. We didn’t know if someone approached her if she’d turn that tree limb on them. I was able to tell the cops she had mental illness of some sort but not everyone would know that. I know they’d already been called about her by the time I called because the dispatcher told me.
The cops in our neighborhood know her. This happens every so often, they take her in, they put her on medication and send her home. The system doesn’t allow for her to receive any additional treatment so her poor family has to deal with her. It’s really sad.
But for someone who doesn’t know the mentally ill individual and just sees them acting erratically or unusually it could be scary. I know this woman scared me. I can only imagine seeing a large man having some sort of mental illness issue, and if you didn’t know who that person was or any of their history, what would you do? Who would you call? How would you know what their issue was? On drugs? Mentally ill? Drunk? Anger issues? What would you do?
Violet
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Yeah, all parts have to be worked on. Of course fixing one part would be better than fixing no parts of the problem. Not that that’s going to happen either.
PurpleGirl
@wasabi gasp: No, they don’t. A person calls 911 and states the emergency. The call goes out for a cop to get there. There usually isn’t the time needed to look into the person’s background. What has happened a lot is that a relative calls 911 because someone is having a psychotic break (acting out in some way). The relative may tell the 911 operator that the person is ill but that still doesn’t mean much to the cop. They want compliance, the want the person to shut up, stand still, whatever and when the cop doesn’t get compliance they react with the gun or a taser. If it’s taser, the person hit with electricity can’t comply.
It would be so much better if an EMT or other health professional went out with the cop but that isn’t how things are done. Unfortunately.
The system and process needs an overhaul.
wasabi gasp
@Mike J: That’s exactly right. Or isn’t it? Is diagnosed mental illness the only situation you’ll find bizarre behavior?
Should special considerations be applied to dangerously bizarre behavior that you wouldn’t apply otherwise?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@wasabi gasp:
To turn the question a little bit: is there any proof that our current system of demanding compliance and obedience actually is the best way to handle people suspected of crimes, particularly people who may be armed, or is it just the one that makes cops feel powerful?
JPL
@Villago Delenda Est: The chief of police just talked about training on the local news. Olsen only had one hour of mental illness training before he killed Hill.
Mike J
@wasabi gasp:
I don’t think cops should gun down people who are high either.
rikyrah
He was NAKED.
You mean, with NO CLOTHES ON, they couldn’t find ONE place to shoot him to WOUND and not to KILL?
Really?
Seriously?
wasabi gasp
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Demanding compliance and obedience from armed people suspected of crimes seems right to me.
Generally speaking, I agree that power tripping is a big problem.
Tenar Darell
The sky is beautiful pretty blue! All the snow piles are melting, yay!
@Litlebritdifrnt: Pictures of your new cute overlord, please.
wasabi gasp
@Mike J: Just high? Me too!
Mike J
@rikyrah: You don’t shoot to wound. If you are going to shoot somebody, you aim for the biggest part of the target. Center mass. It’s hard enough just to hit somebody with a handgun. Aiming for a limb is nigh impossible.
wasabi gasp
@Violet:
It is. Lots of people are nuts. I’ve known, and still know, good and intelligent people who can – through imbalance, indulgence, whatever – have serious “can’t get right” episodes. I no longer associate with the few who’s moments involved violence. I find it difficult to expect more empathy from a cop.
Betty Cracker
The policing problem isn’t just about cops either — it’s the way we’ve internalized “law and order” as a culture. Those of us commenting on this blog might look at these appalling incidents and wonder why resorting to deadly force is the go-to option, but I guaran-damn-tee you most of our fellow citizens do not; they blame the victim. Or, in the case of a mentally ill person, they might blame the victim’s family.
The point is, too many of us accept a society in which police officers must be unquestioningly and instantly obeyed on threat of death. Someone here once commented that we expect cops to treat us like prison inmates, and that’s absolutely true.
Even if you’re a middle-aged white person, and thus obviously less likely to attract law enforcement attention in the first place or die in a hail of bullets if you piss a policeman off, you expect power-tripping from cops, even if you’re just getting a traffic ticket. It shouldn’t be that way, and apparently it isn’t in some other countries. But it is here.
Violet
@wasabi gasp: The sadness in this case is that, because the family is relatively low income, there are few resources available to help this woman long term. They rely on the law enforcement officers to help her get medication. Seriously. I stopped and talked with the police one time and they explained it to me.
Having had a friend who had severe mental illness, I know what her family went through and what state or local resources were not available. There’s very little that is available except very short term.
That’s what’s sad.
Patricia Kayden
@Mike J: Agreed. Just watch Selma. Cops haven’t been civil to Black Americans from forever.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@wasabi gasp:
That’s kind of my point, though — it feels good to demand compliance and obedience from a suspect, but is it actually the most effective way to safely arrest someone? Are there better ways to do it that we’re not using because it’s more important to us to feel that suspects are being properly punished even before they’re charged with a crime?
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy: The little departments do indeed pay too little and have high turnover and low standards. But the bigger shops pay just fine. It’s their employment practices and their standards on the job that are the issue. Also the attitude of going to “war” with certain neighborhoods instead of investing resources in investigating crimes in all communities equally and caring about catching the perps and not just beating up somebody who’s “guilty of something” and “fits the description”.
Deliberately hiring for low IQ is deliberately hiring for impulsivity and violence, cops who resemble a prison population instead of cops who are circumspect and problem solvers. So stupid.
Another Holocene Human
@Violet: FBI takes their mission to support local police departments to mean they should act like local cop shops’ dishonest high dollar lobbyists, lobbying against regulations, mandatory reporting, and standards, instead of seeing their mission to make police work the best it could be, which would definitely include standards and reporting (of all kinds)!!
It’s like regulatory capture for the public sector. One wonders how FBI lost their way so very very badly but then again they hardly started on the right foot, did they?
Another Holocene Human
@Violet: There has been a steady ramp up of hate propaganda and violent rhetoric in my lifetime. There is a lot to make me VERY concerned. The xenophobic shit in rural areas is scary if you know the history of such regions. Of course they have been hurting economically, but it is very very troubling to see these developments. The increased polarization of our politics with an openly fascist party is also very troubling. We had a civil war once already. Our system doesn’t deal with instability well. Just because there is nothing new under the sun doesn’t mean we aren’t checking the wind for incoming “interesting times”.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Kind of troubling to see that psychiatric professionals are arguing with each other about psychosis and depression. Apparently in older literature it was accepted that psychosis can manifest in major depression but in more recent literature it’s treated as something utterly separate.
Not only is there the disruption and anguish of misdiagnosis but you see conditions treated with inappropriate chemical agents because younger professionals have been trained to put symptoms into one little box.
Another Holocene Human
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I disagree. We need doctoring but we need help, too. Part of mental illness is your support network (sometimes it’s family and they’re at the end of their ropes), your community, the kind of stress living in your society puts you under, living conditions, things like that.
We all need help … I mean look at the rates of mood disorder in American society. It’s an epidemic, just like diabetes.
See, I disagree that 1/3 of Americans having depressive episodes is just “bad genes”. (Yeah, some people have genetic depression and that just sucks, but that’s not what I’m talking about.) Depression is a normal part of how the human (mammalian) brain works. It’s part of our decision making process and how we regulate our lives and interactions. We live in a society that demands too much and provides too little. There is no duality to mind and body, it hurts us physically AND spiritually.
Citizen_X
Well, we did have a movement to make the cops less violent, less racist, and more accountable, way back in the ’60s and ’70s. Unfortunately, it was right in the middle of a growing crime wave, and, of course, followed by Ronnie and the “movement” conservatives. So now that the crime wave has pretty much passed, we’re still stuck with the quasi fascists, clinging to their guns and terrified of everything.
I hope the pendulum’s starting to swing back the other way, but there’s a lot of people trying to prevent that from happening.
Citizen_X
@tednacious multrenz: Hey Klan piece of shit: this is America, learn English!
wasabi gasp
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): How else does one arrest a suspect without compliance and obedience? While possibly enjoyable for even a non-power tripping cop and humiliating for a suspect, that in itself does not strike me as punishment.
It’s a different story altogether when the power trip is the motivation for arrest.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@wasabi gasp:
How about aiming for cooperation rather than obedience? De-escalating the situation rather than increasing the person’s sense of threat?
Doug r
@tednacious multrenz: go bark in the corner .
wasabi gasp
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I agree with that, but I don’t assume that those tactics are not already in practice. Also, cooperation is surely a limited time offer.
TheOtherHank
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): In California coastal town where I’ve resided for the last dozen or so years, the last 2 people killed by the cops were a mentally ill man killed by the swat team and a man they tasered to death while he was in a jail cell.
Paul in KY
The justification for this will be that the officer was armed & he/she can, under no circumstances, allow the person to gain control of their firearm, so if (to the officer) it looks like they could, then they have to shoot them.
Sorta like Catch 22 it is…
Paul in KY
@Tree With Water: It’s not so much ‘officer safety’ as “anyone who I think could get my gun, I have to shoot, so they don’t get my gun'” That’s the rationale right there.
Paul in KY
@PurpleGirl: A taser would have been better than a gun, in this situation.
Paul in KY
@JCJ: Remember, the gun is right where the baton is. If he had the baton, he could maybe overpower the cop & then get the gun. There’s their rationale.
Paul in KY
@PurpleGirl: The cop had the weapon.