Another death by cop...

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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... /79894494/

Suicide by cop. End of story.

If you charge at the cops with any kind of weapon you can expect to get cut down.
That is, of course, assuming the cops are telling the truth about what happened...

I don't know what people expect police to do with someone that is having a psychiatrict crisis except wrestle them to the ground and zip tie them. Police have the least training out of all mental health workers. They are not psychiatric social workers, psychologists or psychiatrists, all of which have over 6+ years of training in mental health issues. Some police may have a bachelor's degree, but not all. We expect them to magically de-escalate a person who is not thinking straight with very limit training.

If you want professional mental health workers for a situation like this, pay through your taxes. Say psychiatric social workers make. $50K/year. Have 4 to cover your town to the tune of $200K/yr. The taxes payers will be bitching and moaning about the added expense.

I'd like to know who failed this person WAY before the suicide call came in. Any mental health care? Parents? Doctor? Therapist? Was the person doing anything to help herself?

WP has a habit on dumping on cops. Cops are as*holes, storm troopers, thugs, Nazis, souless jerks, power hunger racists maniacs. There are police who are all that, and do cruel things, but I don't beleve this case here.

There is a whole bunch of neglect before the police killed her. It sucks they get to be the fall guys for our sh***y mental health services

Police are not mental-health workers; they are law-enforcement officers. Their job is to protect the public, themselves, and individuals in crisis, in that order. If the person in crises is a threat to the lives of the police or the public, then that person's threat will be met with deadly force, plain and simple.

Where were the relatives? Did they just turn him out on the street as soon as they were legally able to do so? Did they just say to themselves "He's the government's responsibility, now"? If not, then why didn't they do anything to prevent this from happening?

It's too easy to blame the cops. I blame the people who commit suicide by cop; but if the family tries to sue the cops, they should first look the themselves and ask what they should have done to support and protect one of their own.

How the UK cops deal with someone who has a weapon in their hand:

http://thedailybanter.com/2014/08/uk-po ... one-knife/

The url includes the video. They have an army of cops, now few of them like we do here in the states. The police basically play the game of tag because the person chases them and the cops run circling their cars and one rams him with a trash can. But here in the states, aggression gets dealt with by using aggression. The police here are trained to use force for self defense while in the UK they are taught different.

That's all well and good, but what if the knife-weilding person has a concealed firearm? Worse yet, what if they have a concealed suicide vest, and they're just waiting for a circle of a dozen or so cops to get just close enough?

I think you are reaching there, Fnord... Threat Level Hypothetical style.

He was suicidal, and he charged at armed police with a knife. It really does sound like suicide by cop.

The person killed was Kayden Clarke and he was a transgender man. Please stop mis-gendering him in posts, it is very disrespectful.

Disrespectful to whom?

Maybe ... but why do you think police send in the bomb squad when people have threatened to kill them?Unless there is valid evidence to the contrary, Suicide by Cop seems the most likely ruling - so much so that I have $50 riding on the outcome of the inquiry.

When my husband had the mother of all Aspie melt downs, the neighbors called the cops. My husband trashed our home. Tore both screen doors off the hinges. Beat me up, and took off running. This was before he was diagnosed.

When the three squad cars showed up, my husband said he remembers seeing the officers getting out of the cars and thinking, I better behave. Lol... He doesn't remember anything else of that event.

I remember him just stopping and doing whatever the officers commanded. They zip tied him his hands, and he went to the ER for an evaluation.

I've had psychotic manias, and there is nothing that will snap your ass straight than seeing 3 officers with guns drawn. I don't f*****g blame them. They didn't know if I was armed or hopped up on drugs.

I don't know if she had taken a bunch of benzos (to help speed up I want to die). Benzos really lower my inhibition, and that could have contributed to her charging the officers. Or maybe she figured, f**k this, let them take me out.

About the London example. Poor choice. London is a capital city, in a country with people who aren't armed to the teeth. It is also a tourist city, so the place is crawling with officers. The person was outside in the open, not in a small building. I can see 30 officers showing up quickly.

My city has 101 officers. That includes beat, undercover, blah blah blah...Say each 12 hour shift has 30 officers working for the population of 85K. They do about 20 "domestic crisis" runs a week. Our city is pretty splayed out. I don't think you could get 10 officers to show up in a timely fashion.

Anyway, most non lethal stuff that has been suggested is used for crowd control. Large open areas with many people.

I'm all for mental health workers being called to assist, but I know the tax base here would give a big f**k THAT, so we are stuck with law enforcement playing amateur psychiatrist. It isn't fair to them or the person in crisis.

I'll throw in another 20 for drugs and or alcohol fueling this mess too. My cop friend talked about situation. Said usually the person has chugged down pills and booze, which doesn't help matters.

I should've thought of that and upped the ante on that point alone!

I hope a video surfaces that shows what actually happened, even if it means that the cop-haters were right all along!

Well, I'm assuming that shootings by cops get investigated at least as well as shootings by civilians, so there should be a coroners report. If their findings corroborate the police report, and if it's shown he was holding the knife at some point, then it becomes very difficult to be sceptical of their version of events.