Pocatello, Idaho, officers shot [Victor Perez] nine times within seconds of arriving at his home, according to the law firm representing Perez’s family. The Latino teenager was on the other side of a fence when officers repeatedly told him to drop the knife as he was moving toward them. He was in the midst of a mental health crisis, his aunt Ana Vazquez told NBC News. She added that while he was holding a knife, the family did not see him as a threat. He died last week, several days after being shot.
“Potential.”
What’s that word doing in that headline?
I saw the video of this. Cops went from exiting vehicles to shooting in seconds. There was no threat to their lives. Fucking monsters. You hear the people who called 911 wailing in despair at the outcome.
We need an option other than the police for people experiencing a mental health crisis. The police are not mental health professionals, and we shouldn’t expect them to be. The police are enforcers, emphasis on “force.” We need to establish a new agency of responders who are trained to deal with people who are experiencing a mental health crisis.
I’m living in the UK. The number of killings by police here is in single digits per year. Almost all are armed robberies in progress or active terror incidents.
In my city, there are homeless people, as well as a population of junkies and alcoholics in the city centre. Sometimes one has a meltdown. I’ve seen two or three police patiently talking someone down who’s been having problems.
I’m not saying the local police are without fault. They have their biases and sometimes overreact. The jails are in horrid shape and there are far too many suicides by people in custody. But there’s no reason that police have to be as homicidal as they are in the US.
The was the whole point of the “defund the police” movement as they wanted to take that funding and put it toward alternatives to police for situations exactly like this but the right wingers turned off their brains and recast the meaning to be “the left wants to eliminate police.”
“Re-allocate some police funding to support specialized co-responders!” just doesn’t have the same punch, does it?
Why not? Firefighters are often trained with EMT skills in emergency medicine. Why can’t cops get some training for mental health awareness and ways to handle situations. We act like training is perfect, but look at what cops do. Clearly there is room for improvement.
Until some accountability is established, I don’t want the police near anyone.
Firefighters, EMTs, and police are all first responders, and so it’s necessary for them all to have at least emergency medical training. Yet, they are distinct agencies, because each job requires unique skills and training. I think police, and for that matter all first responders, should have mental health emergency training, just as they have medical emergency training, but I also think it would be useful for there to be a distinct agency that specializes in mental health emergency response, just as there are agencies that specialize in fire emergency and medical emergency response. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the police to fill this role, just as I think it would be unreasonable to expect the police to fight fires or provide all of the services of an EMT.
And the public response to this murder was met with even more over-reaction:
