
Police broke into Chelsea Manning’s home with guns drawn in a “Wellness Check” - hoophoop
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/05/chelsea-manning-video-twitter-police-mental-health/
======
slfnflctd
> "The problem, mental health experts say, is that police should not be the
> ones to check on suicidal people in the first place."

This is a very uninformed statement. For 911 and/or police calls, there is an
extensively well-established (to put it mildly) precedent that the safety of
an area must be secured by police before medical personnel are even allowed on
scene. There are very good reasons for this-- you don't want to have your
primary emergency medical responders taken out by a delusional shooter when
other emergencies _will_ be coming up soon that require them, all too often
for matters of life & death.

> " 'The moral of this story is don’t call the cops,' Cassandra said. “If you
> know someone who is having a mental health crisis, call a friend, a trusted
> neighbor, or someone close by who can safely intervene. Keep the number to a
> volunteer emergency medical service in your city or neighborhood that can be
> called directly"

This I agree with. For people familiar with the situation and person/people
involved (if they exist), a much more appropriate response can be conducted.
There are numerous accounts of these situations leading to the arrest of the
individual in crisis, which of course can make things much, much worse for
them. I know someone it happened to.

~~~
jdietrich
_> This is a very uninformed statement. For 911 and/or police calls, there is
an extensively well-established (to put it mildly) precedent that the safety
of an area must be secured by police before medical personnel are even allowed
on scene._

Here in the UK, the police would not routinely attend an ambulance call-out
for someone experiencing suicidal thoughts unless there was specific
intelligence to suggest that the patient might present a credible threat to an
ambulance crew. Most British police officers are not permitted to carry
firearms; armed officers would only be deployed to a mental health crisis if
there was specific intelligence to suggest that the patient was armed and
posed an immediate threat to life. All armed officers have specialist
training, including crisis management and conflict de-escalation.

In 2017, six people were fatally shot by police in England and Wales. Since
1990, the average number of fatal police shootings was 2.46 per year.

Another way is possible.

[https://www.inquest.org.uk/deaths-in-police-
custody](https://www.inquest.org.uk/deaths-in-police-custody)

~~~
lysp
In Australia a large amount of police work is conducting welfare checks -
suicide threats, people not showing up for work for a few days, distant family
concerned about an elderly relative, health support workers who are concerned
their mentally ill patient hasn't taken their medication, people who show
erratic behaviour at a bank or government welfare office after talking to
staff.

Especially in country areas where they are limited Ambulance/Paramedic
resources, police are more often than not the ones conducting checks and will
be first responders.

If paramedics are concerned about safety on a particular job (weapons
mentioned on call, previous history of violence), they will wait for police to
make the area safe before attending to a patient.

If paramedics are unable to gain entry to a property, police are required to
be the ones to force entry.

Also if paramedics require to take someone involuntarily to hospital for
mental health evaluation they require police presence to "arrest" someone
under the Mental Health Act to allow them to be taken against their will due
to health concerns.

Due to large amounts of mental health work with police, on most shifts police
will have a specialised unit (car) on duty in each area which has a
combination of a police officer and specialist mental health worker /
psychologist. They focus on any jobs relating to mentally ill and can conduct
assessments without having to wait for an ambulance to be available.

There are a lot more police on shift than ambulances, and ambulances are often
tied up for hours at hospitals doing transfers of patients, so police can and
should be the ones dealing with welfare of the general public. They have a
very close relationship with health workers.

Police will NEVER undertake a welfare check with guns drawn, even if forcing
entry to a property. When arresting someone under the Mental Health Act police
will not draw their guns. Guns are a last resort only.

------
codedokode
> In 2017, mental illness played a role in a quarter of 987 police killings,

Can we say that police officers kill more people than terrorists do?

~~~
RoyTyrell
I would be surprised if terrorists killed more people. That isn't to say that
terrorism should be taken lightly because they could get "lucky" and kill lots
of people. While a scary issue, due to the proximity of the US (minus local
terrorists like the alt-right groups) we are largely shielded from it. Hell
drunk drivers kill passengers and those in other vehicles every year far more
than terrorism has minus in 2001.

I wonder how many police officer killings are due to "suicide by cop".

~~~
bigiain
> I wonder how many police officer killings are due to "suicide by cop".

That wouldn't even be a thing if they weren't so trigger happy and
unaccountable. How did it ever even get to be a thing?

~~~
brian_cloutier
Okay, I'm all for trying to reduce how often police preemptively escalate by
entering homes with guns drawn, but cops shouldn't be blamed for trying to
save their own lives.

Suicide by cop often involves drawing a gun on said cop. You don't need to be
trigger happy or unaccountable to shoot someone who's pretending to try to
shoot you.

~~~
Brockenstein
Cops seem to be really good at saving their own lives at the expense of
civilians.

In the rest of the developed world police seem to be pretty good at it without
slaying unarmed people left and right.

------
jaimex2
Reading the comments from Australia, is it fair to say things are this way due
to no gun control?

Every comment seems to miss what seems obvious to me.

Since the chance of armed encounters is high the Police have to respond this
way to every scenario or risk getting shot.

~~~
jeff_petersen
> is it fair to say things are this way due to no gun control?

I don't think so. Maryland isn't the most restrictive state when it comes to
firearm policy[1], but it's a long distance from "no gun control." I'm also
not certain that the chance of armed encounters is terribly high in Bethesda,
though I'm uncertain if those crime statistics are recorded or what terms I
should use to search for them. To give a comparison, the homicide rate per
capita (which I suspect would correlate to some extent with police interaction
with armed individuals) in Montgomery County (where Bethesda is) was
1.4/100,000 in 2016 [2]. For Australia at large, the rate is 1.0/100,000 [3],
so pretty comparable. These police officers don't seem to operate in an area
that is notably more dangerous/violent than Australia.

I do, however, think the issue is cultural. Many police officers in the US
seem to perceive that they are in danger 24/7, and this effects how they
interact with people on a daily basis. There is a preference for an
overwhelming show of force even when it's absolutely uncalled for. This
probably contributes to a feedback loop that causes the general population and
the police to trust each other less and be more confrontational. And I don't
seem to be alone in identifying this as a problem; if you search for problems
with police culture in the US, you will find a large body of criticism for the
default behavior of police officers.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Maryland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Maryland)

[2]
[https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/POL/Resources/Files/MCPD%...](https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/POL/Resources/Files/MCPD%202016%20Annual%20Report\(1\).pdf)
(Page 4)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Australia#Murder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Australia#Murder)

~~~
iainmerrick
Yes, I think you're right that the police attitude (and the way that makes the
public respond) is a big part of the problem.

This discussion always makes me think of Robert Peel's principles of "policing
by consent", amazingly forward-looking given that they were drawn up in the
early 19th century:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles)

The UK doesn't follow these principles perfectly (for example, there are still
tensions between the police and racial minorities) but they're mostly in the
right ballpark. It seems from news reports that most US police forces don't
even try -- the police see themselves more as being in conflict with the
community.

------
maxehmookau
> “It’s not necessary for police to be the first responders when somebody
> calls 911 and says they’re suicidal...”

When your country is missing any sort of universal state "help" for your
health, then what other option is there?

~~~
ItsMe000001
Apart from sending state officials to help the suicidal people to once and for
all accomplish their spontaneous wish created by a brain malfunction? Maybe
check how other countries do this, where less people get shot by police for
whatever reason (in which I don't take sides, the cops are only the last
elements in a much longer chain and have to deal with everything that went
wrong long before as the "solution of last resort - by force").

I also find it fascinating that responses seen in other comments sound
completely reasonable (and are reasonable, given the chosen perspective) when
they justify that what happened is exactly what had to happen (cops may be
called to dangerous places, and it's a fact that that happens to them all the
time). Yet, when looking at it from a different, much farther away perspective
from a country where I would expect such police behavior only in very few
extreme cases (and only carried out by special police forces, of which there
are not many), it does not seem reasonable at all. Again, I understand the
cops, I might act just like them if I had to live their life. So something
other than police tactics may be a causal reason, because if cops actually are
in danger routinely than their measures make sense.

~~~
iainmerrick
Like so many other situations, I think this can be cast as a Prisoner's
Dilemma. :)

All else being equal, whether or not other people have guns, you'll be safer
if you have a gun. But that apparently rational argument leads to everybody
having guns, which is much less safe for everybody.

But there's an extra twist -- you are actually _not_ safer with a gun all else
being equal, because you or your loved ones could be killed by _that gun_
through accident, suicide, etc.

------
sbjustin
The police are trained to go in first and clear the situation. The problem
isn't that you should be afraid to call the police for suicide concerns, it's
what happens next.

Our system has completely failed the the suicidal, mentally ill, etc. You have
almost no legitimate options for help. I recently heard of a story of someone
who was put in jail when they threatened their own life. It's not the police's
fault though, they have no options to them.

~~~
bigiain
> The problem isn't that you should be afraid to call the police for suicide
> concerns

Right. The problem, for a disturbingly large section of the community, is that
they are afraid to call the cops for _anything_.

------
mnm1
So she got swatted. Let's call it what it is. She got swatted because some
assholes decided to call the cops on her. Those assholes' intentions are
irrelevant. If you call the cops on someone in America, you should expect the
police to show up with guns and possibly shoot that person. That's what they
do; that's mostly all they do. As a society, we've decided that the police
should show up in many situations where they are not needed, like medical
emergencies, and have also decided to give them the right to murder with
impunity and without consequences (see qualified immunity). This is what
happens when you give a bunch of bullies who barely graduated high school guns
and power: complete abuse of that power leading to hundreds or thousands of
unnecessary deaths a year; not to mention all the non-lethal violence they
also cause being essentially the largest gang in the nation.

Americans need to learn that the police are not their friends and teach their
children that. Police will not save you when there is a real threat. Police
will stand back, hidden, away from danger just like they did in so many school
shootings. They do not give a fuck about you, your kids, or your safety. They
do not give a fuck about your life or anyone's life other than theirs
(something they constantly talk about on every single cop show ever, in case
you doubt this claim). I truly cannot think of a single positive thing police
do in our society or any reason to call them, ever. Not one.

------
oliwarner
Guns drawn in case they arrive to find an unstable person armed with a gun
threatening to shoot back.

This isn't indicative of a police state, it's indicative of a state where guns
are too readily available to people with mental health issues.

------
Simulacra
I see no problem here. She did make posts that appeared to be threatening
suicide. Police are typically the first ones who can get to the scene. Their
job is to save lives, and this was a legitimate exercise of that job. People
are trying to make this political, about gun control, or some conspiracy, and
I think that’s wrong.

------
milge
This sounds like it was an assassination attempt. I'd move out of the country.

~~~
sschueller
Interesting concept. Murder by cop. Get someone killed by sending the police
to their place. Might actually be possible in the current way police deal with
these kinds of situations...

~~~
viraptor
It's not a "concept" for many years now. And not "might be possible". It's
known as swatting and people have been killed already:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting)

