Police vs the mentally ill.

[TheMadMonk]

This is not to justify police brutality. This is indeed a very, very real and serious problem that somehow does need to be adressed.


All I want to do is to put some perspective on what is a very complex and emotional situation.

Mental health workers and even teachers generally have detailed knowledge of the individuals they are dealing with.

The police do not have this luxury. Rarely even the general knowledge of locals of special interest that a community plod might once have been expected to know or learn.


All they have to go on is what they can see then and there. They do not always have the luxury of time to determine exactly what the situation is. A drunk passed out outside a bar, or an autistic kid trying to sleep in an inapporopriate location? The only thing they have to go on is outward appearances and immediate circumstances. Outside a bar the first assumption is almost always going to be that alcohol is involved, not a relatively rare mental difference.

And unfortunately, one fairly sure fired way to cause some autistic people to resist(react) in a manner that seems violent, is to fail to follow the proper script, and the more anyone tries to force the issue, the worse it can get. And it will look almost exactly like an out of control drunk the whole time.

One thing too many seem to overlook, is that mental illness, pre-existing conditions and impairment due to substance abuse may not become known until well after the fact.

Far too many cops most certainly do go over the top. There are indeed too many jackbooted thugs in uniform. However, this is not reason to look for malice in a situation which can be explained by nothing more sinister than an incorrect but valid assumption and an unfortunate automatic response to unscripted events.

Certainly the cops owe at least an apology when they get it wrong, but in analagous situations, I have seen the "brother/mother/friend" turn up on the scene in full attack mode, too many squarking that the cops should have known or realised what they could not possibly have known.

[howard112211]

1. Getting an overview of the most common mental illnesses and their usual symptoms

is a matter of a few days of reading?

Let's see, there is roughly three or four types of schizophrenics, there are depressions, manics, bipolars, borderlines. There are addictions, PTSD, phobia, neurotics and multiple personalities. Eating disorders like anorexia and bolemia. There are tourette, narcissists and psychopaths. Then you have the "organic" mental handicaps such as dementia, down syndrome and aspergers.

I'm sure I missed a couple, but my point is that knowledge of the one's that are most likely to be relevant to police work could probably be
acquired in a couple of days. Cops don't have to know how to "treat" them. Just to identify them when they see them.

:shrug:

[RainDog]

5. most people with mental illness are not violent

http://www.samhsa.gov/MentalHealth/understanding_Mentalllness_Factsheet.aspx

so police should start with the knowledge that most people with mental illness do not respond with violence.

to assume they do is to assume the right to torture people for their problems.

[howard112211]

9. Yes. Mentally ill are much more likely to be the victim of violence than the aggressor.

People call the cops on them, though, because they don't understand their behaviour. E.g. the ramblings and gestures of a schizophrenic can sometimes be interpreted as implying violence by the uninformed.

Often when I see a homeless person with an obvious mental illness acting it out in a downtown area, there is a familiar pattern: Some self-appointed security wannabe alpha male will start harassing the person. I have never witnessed it going into downright violence, but the tendency is usually there.

[TheMadMonk]

13. Right we have it very clear mate. Any use of a taser is torture...

...as far as you are concerned. Even on the six footer coming at them with an axe, screaming incoherently.


I agreem most mentallly ill people are indeed not violent. However, some occasionally are and others can display behaviour that can give the appearance of offering violence.

As I have already mentioned one way to cause certain types of autistics to become violent is to force them off script. Particularly on top of a command such as "Stay here and don't move until I come back."

Taking a comfort item can also inadvertently provoke violence.

As for what howard had to say about taking a couple of days to recognise which essentially means diagnose all possible "violent" mental illnesses on observation alone, well I certainly recognise that he's looney tunes if he truly believes that. Even profesionals running batteries of tests get it wrong all the time. To a cop on an often dark street in a probably chaotic situation, symptoms of many mental illness can look exactly like drunkeness or other form of self inflicted chemical impaimenmt.

Cops on the street can only act on what the know then and there, and their perception of another's behaviour. Nor can they afford to guess at a mental illness and try effecting control on that basis. What if it is a full blown psychotic break, and not merely confusion? Or someone on PCP? Or merely a beligerant drunk, which absent special circumstances is almost certainly going to be the most likely situation for the cops to be facing.

One major reason why cops reach for the taser, spray or gun as soon as they don't get instant compliance is the number of times someone has taken a shot at them or one of their colleagues. It is the behaviour of the supposedly sane, waving syringes, knives and guns towards cops, that in part at least causes the behaviour of cops towards those who might otherwise be handled in a gentler fashion.

Another, is that some amongst them are indeed the power hungry turds you envisiage. But not all, not even most. Most really are there to try to make a difference in a very dangerous environment, where the only thing that keeps you remotely safe is sometimes one of those power hungry turds.

It sounds so simple to say, "Just turn in the bad apples." but it isn't. Especially in professions like copper and soldier, you are utterly reliant on your peers for your own safety. And any gaps can all to easily compromise that safety.

No one likes a snitch, not even when the one being snitched on deserves it. It's management's/the brass's job to do any weeding that needs doing. All that his peers believe that they can realistically do is wait for bad apples to expose themselves or otherwise be found out.

To do anything else invites being hung out to dry on the street or battlefield. And much the same applies in any other high risk profession. Apart from pyros in the fire department, and killers in medicine, virtually no gets snitched on because "accidents" are all too easy to arange.

We may not like it but that's the way it is. It's the brass and their obsession with image where we should concentrate our ire, not the poor bastard on the street. And we also have to accept that those poor bastards and sometime turds are only human, and can somtimes lose it on a bad day and not immediately bay for blood.

You and your lip might just have come on top of a crack whore's dead baby, a drunk driver T-boning a family, and a bar fight. You might not really have deserved that taser bolt, but nor did he deserve being called a cunt for simply doing his job, and your bellying up to him in was probably not such a smart idea in retrospect.

It might be wrong to taser a pregnant woman, but so is her trying to claim special privileges on the basis of her pregnancy (a common one being occupying handicapped spaces without a tag) and refusing to be ticketed. If she makes a move for a phone in her bag to call her husband to sort it out, (pure speculation) and the cop is twitchy from coming of a stop in which a known violent offender was caught with a loaded firearm, the use of a taser while still wrong might be at least partially understandable.

Just for the record, I can not conceive any truly benign explanation for the gunfire which killed the little girl recently. The best I can do is some dickhead yahoo showing off for the camera. And other such fuckups or worse are indeed far too common.

There is a dangerous jackboot element that needs adressing somehow. But I can guarantee one way that won't work, is to lump simple screwups into the same basket. We have to cut some slack on honest mistakes if we're ever going to get a decent shot at the true cancer in the ranks.

As several downthread note, it's not necesarily the cops, it's the gutting of multiple systems that is the ultimate problem. Treating it by taking even more money away is a losing proposition. Right up there with NCLB.

[RainDog]

17. no, you're lying

I didn't say a six-footer with an axe, etc.... which is yet another stereotype of mental illness from you, it seems.

in the case of the guy with autism, he wasn't mentally ill. not all autistics pull away from people - tho this is the stereotype, again.

when you have to lie to make a claim, maybe the claim is worthless. But people do this all the time - they lie about what someone said... create a straw man that doesn't exist to knock down as someone else's argument.

it reeks like cheap perfume on a whore.

what I have said, repeatedly, is that tasers are overused in the U.S. and this abuse is documented.

The case of a kid sitting on a sidewalk is a case of police acting like assholes. He'd never taken a drink in his life. Tasering a woman at her wedding... not the speeding ticket woman... is the police acting like assholes.

The other things you are talking about have fuck nothing to do with the issue of overuse of tasers by cops.

if you want to make an argument for cops, you'd do a better job if you wouldn't lie about what others said.

[Posteritatis]

15. You seem to be responding to a claim that was never made

Where did the OP suggest that this is something that could be handled in a couple days' study?

[howard112211]

21. I didn't express myself clearly enough, sorry. I am making that claim.

I claim that in a couple of days of study one can cover the, with regards to police work most relevant, types of mental illnesses to a degree where one has a good chance of identifying them.

[old mark]

2. The legislators who discharged large numbers of people from hospitals

to small group homes funded by counties are really to blame for this. Counties have less money, are cutting police and services, and cerrttinly are cutting monty for group homes for these people. There will be many more interactions between police and the mentally ill, many with bad outcomes because legislators want to save state money and don't care about the people they are supposed to serve.

Many police departments today don't get training in anything other than basics...don't expect any improvement in this anytime soon.

mark

[Odin2005]

4. The group homes are better than institutions.

The institutions of old were HORRIBLE places.

[old mark]

10. I worked for years getting people OUT OF institutions, and I agree...but

if the funds are not there, guess who will get the short end of the stick.


mark

[Odin2005]

19. I know that very well, I go lobby at the state capitol every spring for funding for that.

[Odin2005]

3. I wonder how many autistic people get harrased by cops because our odd mannerisms...

...are interpreted as "suspicious behavior". And given that we tend to go into "meltdown" when stressed... :scared:

[pipi_k]

6. Same thing for people with panic disorder

and/or agoraphobia.

That's one of my nightmares...

being in the middle of an anxiety/panic attack trying NOT to freak out, barely succeeding, looking suspicious, and being confronted by a store clerk or some other "authority figure" who thinks I might be up to no good.

It could turn very bad in no time at all.

:(

[krabigirl]

20. Same here.

[cap]

7. PA is starting to train its police

to deal with autism.

[RainDog]

8. police are using tasers all out of proportion to its need

and they are torturing pregnant women and children because they think they have the right to use a taser because it exists.

there is massive evidence of abuse by police in the use of tasers all over this country. they need to stop treating citizens like criminals. they need to stop acting like sadistic assholes.

no apologies for police from me.

I hope the ones who tortured the kid with austism and a heart condition are sued and lose and the family bankrupts the city.

Maybe then police will stop acting like assholes.

[TheMadMonk]

18. I won't disagree with you there, though I contest there are shades of grey...

...where you persist in seeing only black or white. Cops can have mightmare days and some unfortunate soul gets tasered over an innocent mistake and twitchiness. Inarguably not good. However, very much arguably a better choice than a bullet.

I like the idea of taffy guns which can even ensnare suicides on narrow ledges, but apparently the powers that be are afraid that the same suicides might bury their face in the "taffy" and suffocate themselves. Or misapplication might effect the same result.

Beanbags bruise and break ribs and collarbones. Rubber bullets can easily kill. Tasers were chosen for maximum effectiveness for a very low chance of lethality, one that really only emerged at all after it hit the real world and a huge database of events was able to be amassed.

Cops do over use them. Partly over twitchiness about possible weapons; Partly out of feelings of power; and partly because they do start to see them like Star Trek phasers set to stun and forget that there is a small but very significant diference between minimal and zero lethality.

Nor is every use on an overly beligerant pregnant woman, or even a child unjustified. Sometimes she really is reaching for a gun. And sometime a 5 foot tall, non-threatening, campus cop is faced with the untennable situation of 180 lb of emotionally disturbed sixth grader doing his level best to pulverise a 70 lb girl. That poor cop had no choice but to tase a twelve year old. I come from a day when 4-6 burly male teachers would wade in and use whatever physical force necessary, up to and including breaking fingers and limbs, but today that would be assault.

There is an old adage which goes more or less: Never ascribe to malice, what can as easily be ascribed to ignorance or incompetence. Just think before you make the accusation of deliberate misuse.

[Dappleganger]

11. The underlying problem is the lack of mental health care in this country; however, the police

are not mental health care workers. How are they to know the difference between someone completely tripping out on meth or someone with a serious mental disorder? Quite honestly, by the time they are called their gun is drawn and there *will* be violence (it's a sad state of affairs).

[lumberjack_jeff]

12. Raising awareness among police officers is one of the main priorities for DD advocacy groups.

In my experience, the officers appreciate any insights we can give them.

One suggestion for people with disabilities or those with mental illness is to carry a business card to give to police explaining their illness/disorder.

http://carolgreenburg.vox.com/library/post/good-cop.html

[NNN0LHI]

14. I could not be a police office for any money in the world

I am still hard on them when they are crooked but I still have to admire the good ones who try and do the right thing. But I could not do it. Smart enough to know my limitations.

And most of them are good ones. At least from my experience.

Don

[backscatter712]

16. You'd think that cops would get training on mental health issues...

Our governments see fit to spend insane amounts of money on weapons and combat training for police officers, you'd think that they could spend a few thin times on sending them to Psych 101 and giving them some basic training on how to recognize mental illness and handle mentally ill people in the field.

But nooooo, it's easier to give them tasers....