Police shooting crazy folk, why this became a thing.

a reply to: Fools

sent you a PM.

a reply to: network dude

You had an interesting thread until you said you can't disagree with the cops which is utter BS. You should edit your OP including the training police have for dealing with a black person having a mental breakdown in the US.

Social media has too many examples of police deescalating a situation where someone has a knife and no one was shot since Wallace was murdered.

But since you consciously left that out of your OP, this thread and you are highly suspect.

originally posted by: game over man
a reply to: network dude

You had an interesting thread until you said you can't disagree with the cops which is utter BS. You should edit your OP including the training police have for dealing with a black person having a mental breakdown in the US.

Social media has too many examples of police deescalating a situation where someone has a knife and no one was shot since Wallace was murdered.

But since you consciously left that out of your OP, this thread and you are highly suspect.

A man holding a knife is one thing. A man charging with a knife is another.

We do not pay cops enough to be trained to identify psychosis or be psychologists.

But ill tell you, i fault no officer shooting dead someone running at them with a knife. Tasers could fail. A bullet won't.

a reply to: game over man

Get off it.

The whole thread is dedicated to the idea that those who are mentally ill should be better served. Not just blacks who are mentally ill, but everyone. Don't make this what it isn't.

Either stick to the topic or go make your own thread to whine about racism.

originally posted by: game over man
a reply to: network dude

You had an interesting thread until you said you can't disagree with the cops which is utter BS. You should edit your OP including the training police have for dealing with a black person having a mental breakdown in the US.

Social media has too many examples of police deescalating a situation where someone has a knife and no one was shot since Wallace was murdered.

But since you consciously left that out of your OP, this thread and you are highly suspect.

There are hundreds of thousands / millions of police interactions. However, when you have a weapon, not all of them are going to end nicely. No two situations are the same.

You cannot pick the one (or even a handful) of outlier events and try to make it like there is a trend when the sample size could be many thousands of interactions that you quite frankly wont hear about. No one post on social media, "Hey everyone! A cop arrested a nut job and didn't shoot him! Give me a bunch of likes!"

GTFOH.

a reply to: game over man
As someone living with a mental illness and grew up abused by the system and still haven't taken my life nearing 30, you need to stop playing this game, game over man.

The moment you made this about black people with mental illness and not about all people suffering, proves to me you don't have a clue besides some opinionated article. Mental illness isn't a race issue. It's a culture, society issue, been with us since the dawn of time and currently is being exploited for agendas, favors, fame and most importantly, cash.

a reply to: Fools
I'm sorry to hear that, coming from someone who could have easily been in your son's shoes.

I'm diagnosed with all of those, but never fell down that hole, I had friends who did and got to witness that destruction second hand. But even so I'm struggling and without my parents, I would be right out there on the street waiting for some government employee to get back from vacation to fill out my paperwork while I'd spend those 2 weeks fighting to stay alive.

I am thankful as all hell for my parents, I am also guilty as hell for making them suffer, I want to repay them, but I have no income, no savings, so while I'm trying to get myself financially stable, I do everything I can for them outside of finances. Especially as they get older, I take care of the house, yard, cars and mundane housework.

I know I'll never be able to repay them for what they have and are doing for me, but I'll always be ready to help and care for them as best as I can as they get older.

I don't know your son, but I bet in the moments of clarity, he loves you with all his heart and is thankful for you.

And from someone who's been in similar situation, I thank you for being a parent.

Are black people more prone to be mentally ill?

a reply to: galaga
I don't believe so, if everything was truly equal in the world. I feel like they're more likely to go undiagnosed or ignore and find themselves in bad situations that affect then for life.

Skin color inequalities aside, I believe this is a serious issue for our entire species. Something that with all the new advancements were finding, is still left in near medieval era methods. It generally isn't profitable.

a reply to: Nivhk

Parents mostly want to be repaid with pride. Act appropriately, make the correct decisions...that is what most parents want.

We didn't have children to get wealthy.

originally posted by: drewlander
a reply to: DBCowboy

No. I do not want the government deciding who is crazy. Please consider an alternate solution.

If you are charging two armed police officers with a knife and refuse to stop or follow directions then yes, the govt (police) are able to determine that you are crazy.

a reply to: network dude

My dad retired from the military after Vietnam and spent the rest of his career treating veterans with PTSD, although it was not called that at the time. In the beginning, he did research and worked with Stanford University in California. Later, he moved into private treatment and mental health hospitals. My dad frequently talked about the watershed moment when Then-Governor Ronald Reagan closed the mental health hospitals. All of those individuals were put out on the street with most ending up homeless or put back into homes while unstable with their families. My dad swore that the majority ended up in prison which is why he redirected his entire career to address mental health within the prison system. When he died, he was Associate Warden for one of California's max prisons. He had many stories about the mentally ill being in and out of prison like a revolving door....all because the systems that had been in place to provide real treatment to these individuals was nixed by politicians. Besides living his entire adult life in central California, I think it was this perceived lack of compassion from Reagan, a Republican, which turned my dad into a life-long Democrat.

a reply to: CIAGypsy

In society, we have a skewed sense of compassion though, even going back that far. People felt that mental hospitals were the true lack of compassion keeping people locked up in cruel conditions against their will.

We see the same impulse at work now in some of the country DAs who refuse to prosecute crimes of certain types and below certain thresholds. Look at Chesa Boudin who simply will not act on property crime unless the total damage is above $950 out in either San Fran or LA. He makes that determination out of compassion.

People do all kinds of things because they don't want to be perceived as mean, but in the end, are those things really for the best and were they really mean?

originally posted by: game over man
a reply to: network dude

You had an interesting thread until you said you can't disagree with the cops which is utter BS. You should edit your OP including the training police have for dealing with a black person having a mental breakdown in the US.

Social media has too many examples of police deescalating a situation where someone has a knife and no one was shot since Wallace was murdered.

But since you consciously left that out of your OP, this thread and you are highly suspect.

I am not a fan of ANYONE getting shot by the Police. If I had my way, it would never happen again. But in this case, the guy's people called the cops. They came, the guy charged at them with a knife after he was told to drop it. Turns out he was crazy.

Now you explain to me how the cops were A. supposed to know of his condition B. how to deal with him specifically, and C. how you avoid being slashed or killed when a crazy adult male is charging at you with a knife.

Do that for me, and I'll ask that the OP be modified to remove that.

a reply to: ketsuko

I don't necessarily disagree with you. I'm just saying that, according to my dad, Reagan made the move as a purely fiscal decision without any compassion of the disaster it created on the social end. Ultimately, the costs shifted from running the mental institutions to the prisons. People were still institutionalized, but not really in a manner to treat them but rather to contain them.

I'm just tell you his opinion. I don't personally know enough about the details to say he was right or wrong. But it affected him deeply enough on an ideological level that he refused to support another Republican ever again.

Let's talk about mental illness.

The biggest F up in the last 35 years with regard to on-the-ground patient care has been the Republican-led destruction of government-funded mental health facilities.

This issue does not have a profit motive worth exploiting by anyone decent in this regard.

This is a royally big screw up.

The homeless problem in this country is led by mental illness, not economic issues.

The violence problem in this country (speaking to police involvement and the violence that ensues) is a mental health issue, not a gun availability issue or an "evil cop" issue.

We've had 35-40 years of government defunding of mental health facilities.

Jails are crowded with people who don't belong there. A majority of which suffer from various mental illnesses and will never get the help they need. They will never reform. It will never look up for them. That's desperation on a level I can't imagine.

If we don't address the mental health problem in this country instead of ACTIVELY sweeping it under the rug and pretending we can solve it with jails, cops, and misappropriated money, then we can expect our callousness to catch-up to us and teach us a lesson in empathy. Those lessons are often deadly.

I have schizoaffective bipolar and have had four run-ins with the police during episodes.

I have complied passively in all occassions, but was bruised up by one because I was scared of his aggressive demeanor, but luckily three other patrol cars (with more gentle and compassionate officers who de-escalated the situation) showed up soon after and transfered me to a inpatient facility. I have been taken to the County Jail on two occassions, one for inadvertantly slapping my mother during an episode (three months in solitary while the advocates tried to get me transfered to an inpatient facility) and another time for a week or so during a traffic stop ( I negated to yield after being awake for three days, but never exceeded the speed limit).

I have been in inpatient more than I can count, luckily I haven't had to go in for over ten years as of this writing.

I spent roughly five years homeless or couch surfing for a few days with friends and good Samaritans.

I was never informed I was eligable for SSDI until I had a severe dissociative episode in Seattle, and spent two weeks at Harborview. The first level I was on was young, loud women I quickly distanced myself from and then I was bumped up to a more "relaxed" level with art therapy and other creative activities. This was where I finally got my diagnosis.

Once the paperwork for SSDI went through and I was qualified, I had a small bit of income (450 a month since I was so young and had limited work experience) but it was enough to afford a small room in a CO-OP type living situation.

It took over fifteen years to find a workable cocktail of medications. I don't respond to the newer generations of drugs, so I am on Haldol, a mood stabilizer and two designed to help me sleep.

It also helps that I am now married to an old childhood friend whose grandmother suffered from Schizophrenia so he knows how to handle the situation when things get overboard.

Most people don't have as much luck as I do/did and a lot aren't compliant with their meds and instead prefer to self medicate which keeps the cycle going. I have also met drug seekers in these inpatient environments.

When it comes to police response to mental health crisis situations, most are there to get the patient into a proper care facility, but if the patient is combative or threatening with a weapon, things go south rather quickly. It's distressing to read about, and for several years I was terrified of officers when I had an episode after reading about the shooting in the paper or online.

Maybe they're more gentle with me because I'm female and non-threatening, but I know of some homeless who refuse inpatient and they simply get welfare checks to make sure they're doing ok and don't need involuntary hospitalization or other services.

Others aren't so lucky. I've seen some mental health cases who are so far gone and they can't get any help because there simply isn't enough room for them in the hospitals. It's heartbreaking to witness. They aren't violent, but just so "lost in there own world" that they just stumble around in there own filth while passers by walk on. They aren't taken to prisons because it would be a further detriment to their mental health.

Some cases need to be institutionalized, but ever since such places were shut down en masse, there simply isn't anywhere for them to go for observation and treatment.

With the rise of mental health awareness and homeless advocacy, I hope someone (be it a generous and well financed benefactor or Government run institutions) steps up and takes the initiative to help the members of our population that desperately needs shelter, medication, and therapy.

I sincerely hope that with the rise of advocacy counselors working in tandem with law enforcement that we can start to see less lethal measure taken against some individuals, but sadly, some people are too violent and far gone and it ends with the loss of life.

a reply to: CIAGypsy

It's a bit like the feelings on animal testing. Yes, there was some animal testing that was unnecessary and cruel, but at the same time, there is other animal testing that is absolutely needed and for a variety of reasons.

Husband works at making vaccines for animals, both farm and companion. An overly earnest college kid ran them down at a conference once demanding they cease animal testing. One of his companions asked her if she preferred if the first test of their product was when it was given to her beloved pet.

It's not that they want to do animal testing at all. From a coldly economic standpoint, it's expensive. It would be cheaper not to, but there are just some things that only animal testing can reveal - safety and efficacy are two of them at this point in time.

So do I doubt that there was a motive in budget cutting? No, but at the same time, I also know that people were advocating heavily against the asylum system as being cruel and against patient rights too. It was likely touted as a win/win at the time. The advocates were getting rid of their inhumane system and the government would save money.

a reply to: Nivhk

Thanks, I hope so. Right now he is so depressed and whatnot it is just a struggle for him to get to work and clean his living area. But I am a pretty patient person. I will give him several more months of total help. Then I will try to get him out and into his first living space that he alone is responsible for.

a reply to: ketsuko

Honestly, mental health standards are not what they used to be. Electroconvulsive treatment is an example. To recieve this, you have to actually sign off on it (or your guardian). I've only known of one person who underwent it, and it was due to her psychosis telling her God didn't want her to eat or drink, and the problems the NG tube were causing when we tried to force nutrients into her. The therapy didn't work, and was a last ditch effort before putting in a PEG tube.

Restraint, seclusion, etc...very rare.

The secret is to have a patients rights advocate actually being involved, and not being afraid to fire and press charges on people who are guilty of abuse and neglect. Will it still happen? Sure. What do you expect from low wage employees? They screw up Filet o Fish sandwiches, you don't think they'll screw up patient care? But what do you do? Raise their wages and increase cost to offset it?

Hell of a situation, having everything be for profit and budget driven.