Officer shoots 13-year-old boy with autism after mom calls 911 for help, Utah cops say

[goout]

Nepperhan:

Shoot an unarmed 13 year old, who is running away? That’s hard to justify.

I’ve just been watching the Netflix documentary called LA92 and it had been a while since I’d seen the footage of Rodney King, but it lead me to think, if that wasn’t based on them being racist, how do a group of 10 or twelve armed police not realize how to subdue one person? Could it be that because of the culture of rugged individualism, that even when police are trained in teamwork, they can never actually operate as a team. It goes against the nature of rugged individualism.

In this story, I believe the mother could have gathered together 10 neighborhood women and achieved what the police couldn’t achieve.

Anyway, that thought is something that came up as I watched the Rodney King footage again.

You should watch The Whole Rodney King video, not the edited portion commonly represented by the media at the time. The media ought to be held accountable for the deception it perpetrated and the violence it incited.
You would have quite a different perspective on what happened and the possible motivations of the police involved. Doesn’t excuse the fact that the police became inflamed with rage, but it does put the incident in proper perspective, and that has little to do with race and more to do with the angel dust, and the out of control raging of a very large man with no interest in cooperating, to say the least.

 

[toabb]

it does put the incident in proper perspective, and that has little to do with race and more to do with the angel dust, and the out of control raging of a very large man with no interest in cooperating, to say the least.

no , it doesn’t. Being a professional doesn’t give one carte blanche to beat a drug addict without mercy. drug addiction is a disease. A “pro-life” society shouldn’t beat it’s addicts.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Removed by poster. Duplication.

 

[Motherwit]

Motherwit:

Nepperhan:

Shoot an unarmed 13 year old, who is running away? That’s hard to justify.

I’ve just been watching the Netflix documentary called LA92 and it had been a while since I’d seen the footage of Rodney King, but it lead me to think, if that wasn’t based on them being racist, how do a group of 10 or twelve armed police not realize how to subdue one person? Could it be that because of the culture of rugged individualism, that even when police are trained in teamwork, they can never actually operate as a team. It goes against the nature of rugged individualism.

In this story, I believe the mother could have gathered together 10 neighborhood women and achieved what the police couldn’t achieve.

Anyway, that thought is something that came up as I watched the Rodney King footage again.

You should watch The Whole Rodney King video, not the edited portion commonly represented by the media at the time. The media ought to be held accountable for the deception it perpetrated and the violence it incited.
You would have quite a different perspective on what happened and the possible motivations of the police involved. Doesn’t excuse the fact that the police became inflamed with rage, but it does put the incident in proper perspective, and that has little to do with race and more to do with the angel dust, and the out of control raging of a very large man with no interest in cooperating, to say the least.

This is an example of how British police might have dealt with the man.

 

[Uliana988]

They could also try using a bola to wrap a person’s legs up. If the person lunges at them, he/she falls over. If the person tries to run away, he/she fall over. Then, the police can pin the suspect down. Yes, there is a risk of injury from falling over, but at least the person isn’t killed. If the person submits quietly, there is no damage. I don’t know about the hooks some of those bolas have, though. I don’t think they’re necessary as they could cause puncture wounds.

 

[vz71]

I’m not surprised that it isn’t getting any attention from the normal police apologists on here.

Generally people end up defending the police after waiting for all of the information to come out.
In this case, I imagine a lot of people are waiting for more information before making any condemnation.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

Generally people end up defending the police after waiting for all of the information to come out.
In this case, I imagine a lot of people are waiting for more information before making any condemnation.

The information that justifies a 13 year old autistic boy being gunned down?

Yes, I suspect it will come. It will probably turn out that there was a knife in a drawer in the kitchen, which means the police were right to fear for their lives and had good cause to gun down anyone within the building.

 

[vz71]

The information that justifies a 13 year old autistic boy being gunned down?

Admitted what we know so far does not look good.

. It will probably turn out that there was a knife in a drawer in the kitchen, which means the police were right to fear for their lives and had good cause to gun down anyone within the building.

Sounds like you have already concluded guilt without bothering with all the facts.

 

[pnewton]

The police’s job is not to “calm down” agitated, mentally ill young people. My first reaction is that there needs to be some other crisis response team that one can call in that situation.

If there is a de-funding of the police, this would be a good first step. Separate out response to mental health crises and send out social workers.

 

[Nepperhan]

8 years later, I’m very happy that I’ve left the USA for Japan, a country with about 40% USA’s population but fewer than 1000 murders per year NATIONWIDE; an ASIAN country where I don’t have to worry about anti-Asian racism; a country where I don’t have to worry about losing my job for saying something politically incorrect; a country where I don’t have to wait for like 10 hours at the ER and then get hit with a $1600 medical bill just for washing out some foreign objects in my eye.

A country which never has come to grips with how it treats its minority-group citizens?

 

[new-kirishitan]

A country which never has come to grips with how it treats its minority-group citizens?

Sorry to disappoint you, but the minority groups (in other words, the Ryukyu people from Okinawa and Ainu people from Hokkaido) in today’s Japan are treated better than many of their counterparts in America. Persecution against Okinawans and Ainu has long been gone, and they do not have to worry about ethnic profiling as much as their American counterparts. The kind of intense ethnic tension and hatred rampant in the USA doesn’t exist here either. So the Americans should really take a good look at themselves before criticizing Japan.

 

[Nepperhan]

Sorry to disappoint you, but the minority groups in today’s Japan are treated better than many of their counterparts in America. Persecution against Okinawans and Ainu has long been gone, and they do not have to worry about ethnic profiling as much as their American counterparts. The kind of intense ethnic tension and hatred rampant in the USA doesn’t exist here either. So the Americans should really take a good look at themselves before criticizing Japan.

No, Japan has not come to grips with how it has treated its minority groups. There has been less of the “useful tension” in Japan for it look at itself and its citizens.

I did not bring this up to criticize Japan – you posted how Japan’s acts and opinions are superior. I’m not sure about comparisons or if they are useful but I am sure that Japan’s treatment of its own ethnic minorities could have been and could be now much better.

 

[Anesti33]

Tis_Bearself:

The police’s job is not to “calm down” agitated, mentally ill young people. My first reaction is that there needs to be some other crisis response team that one can call in that situation.

If there is a de-funding of the police, this would be a good first step. Separate out response to mental health crises and send out social workers.

This is nigh impossible.

Ever since the Reagan administration when the asylums shut down, the criminally insane have mingled on the streets with drug addicts, homeless, and other poorly-managed populations.

Every time there is a mass shooting, there is an appeal to “better mental health care” which means “throw more money at it” and so it happens: more doctors, more clinics, more medications, more case workers than ever before, managing the criminally insane where they are on the streets and in their homes. But without confinement and with self-reporting substituted for real surevillance, the criminally insane can have real problems, and the violent problems are the ones where police are called in to act.

Yes, police are poorly equipped to harmlessly take down a violent mentally ill person. This is because they are militarized and trained in the use of deadly force. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

You can muster “mental health response” teams to come on these calls, but they will be mostly filled with case workers and psychiatrists who might have some strategic Haldol, but they will be unable to deal with a truly enraged and violent offender who is on drugs. They will still coordinate with the police at every turn and request backup when things go south.

I think it would be a good idea to consider rolling back the clock and re-instituting the asylum system, where the criminally insane will not be turned out on the street as soon as their insurance demands it.

 

[ATraveller]

It’s the way police are trained in America that’s the problem. That’s why all of the time the American media has spent on blaming racism (I’m sure there are some who are racist) won’t do much to fix cops from overreacting. It’s the training. The sooner people see this, the better. To fix the flawed training American cops get will take at least a decade.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

An autistic child is not “criminally insane” though. Frankly the emergency services shouldn’t have been involved here at all.

 

[Cruciferi]

Frankly the emergency services shouldn’t have been involved here at all.

Who should’ve been?

 

[goout]

goout:

it does put the incident in proper perspective, and that has little to do with race and more to do with the angel dust, and the out of control raging of a very large man with no interest in cooperating, to say the least.

no , it doesn’t. Being a professional doesn’t give one carte blanche to beat a drug addict without mercy. drug addiction is a disease. A “pro-life” society shouldn’t beat it’s addicts.

I didn’t say the whole video exculpates anyone of anything.
I said it puts the incident in proper context.
Motherwit made an observation that was not based on what happened, and cast the assumption of racism on an incident that was violent and intractable from the start. Rodney King could have very well been an intoxicated huge white man, and the same out of control melee might have happened.

These police officers didn’t go looking for a black man to beat senseless. They got involved with an enraged man with pcp in his system who would not cooperate and was not subdued with normal means.

Could the officers have responded with less violence? Yes of course. But to accuse them of pre-emptive racism is naive, stereotyped, and very unfair.

 

[goout]

A “pro-life” society shouldn’t beat it’s addicts.

Neither should a pro choice society.
In fact, a pro choice society ought to respect the full flowering of human development, so that everyone has the right to choose basic things. Like to continue living for instance.

If you are pro choice, how to you reconcile your concern for human rights as exhibited here with the killing of innocent human beings?
How can those two possibly be part of the same worldview?

 

[pnewton]

No one. The mother was there with her autistic son and called the police to help her. That was a terrible idea. The job of police is to enforce criminal law, no parent. I am all for defunding police, but such a move will have to come with the understanding that police will only do police work. They would not be marriage counselors or mental health workers. They would not serve as bouncers for retail business. Right now, the same people with mental illness are constantly generating calls for police, either family wanting help with them, or business wanting them out for fear they will scare customers. None of this should be the job of police. I know of no police officer that would miss having this particular task removed from their job description. Social workers would make better responders, as they cannot only deal with the individual suffering from mental illness, but also the caregiver, or store employees, explaining how to handle these situations themselves.

We have gotten ourselves in quite a fix since the 80’s, when the push to save money and de-institutionalize the mentally ill pushed these people into the public. The public who did not want to be taxed to care for these people, also did not want them around, as in, “not in my neighborhood.” Therefore, prisons and jails are now our warehouses for the mental ill.

 

[Rockoh22]

Defunding will make things a lot worst.

People say, police need more training. Great, how do we pay for that?
It is said, Police should not be called for situations such as the one in this OP. Great, defunding the police would have fixed this? No. Actually if we fund more the police, we can have more personnel and we can have specialist for specific situations such as this. So, more funding it is needed.

There are a lot of reasons for funding more the police, and I see no good reasons for defunding.

Who gets hurt by defunding the police? Not the wealthy guy who can afford security. NO sir, The poor and the vulnerable are affected by having less police. They will suffer more than those with security.

Don’t think this is true? Here are some world examples. Mexico, you can buy the police easy because the Cartels have more money for security than the government pays them.

Africa, People who can afford security are in well of areas, while the poor are captured and taken away for sex, slavery and land.

Haiti, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Brazil, Guatemala, India… The list is on and on and on. No police hurts the poor, not the rich.