Texas cop shoots and kills Black man during mental health check

It's strange they didn't send out another mental health professional. Will there be more protests? Who's right and wrong here:

 

cops don't want to do this job, they are not mental health professionals, I agree, let the right people for the job do it, the cops can stand by as backup

same would be true if you called the fire department or an ambulance, you expect the right people to come and address the problem without a gun being the first option

that said, not enough known about this case, would need more to see why he was shot

 

Calling the cops on someone with mental health issues is the same as taking a gun out and murdering them right then and there. Almost a 100% chance the cops will kill the person for some perceived threat.

 

Have house-calls for mental crises been going on for a long time? I always assumed that people with mental disabilities are treated at hospitals and not at their homes.

 

Incorrect. I work for an answering service and we have several mental health crisis lines where people go to homes to help people (one of them is even in Texas). Why this family called 911 instead of one of the many mental health crisis lines that are available I have no idea. You can easily get such information from any health care provider. If they don't know themselves (as in right there on the spot when asked) they have access to ways of finding out easily enough.

One should never call 911 for mental health issues. Talk to your healthcare provider and get the necessary numbers and program them into your phones or write it on a piece of paper if you must. Calling 911 is only useful for physical medical issues, fire emergencies, and cops. That's it.

 

What world do you live in? This is a one in a million exception, the police acted appropriately and were justified in doing so.

 

Then you have no experience in this field, they closed the asylums because they were considered inhumane and because they had drugs to treat the mentally ill in their own homes. But when that goes wrong (normally because the mentally ill choose to stop taking with medication) people then have to call 911 and if they're so violent the paramedics can't handle them they have to call police. Mentally ill people can't be persuaded and are INCREDIBLY violent and resistant to pain, they fight like Satan with many actually wanting to commit suicide by cop. Then the hypocrites whine because they say these people were 'vulnerable'?

 

Lolwut?

"one in a million exception"?

Sadly, you seem to have commented without being very well informed on the issue:

And more than 1 in 5 people shot and killed by police have a mental illness, according to a Washington Post database of fatal shootings by on-duty police officers.

Police have fatally shot more than 1,200 people with mental illnesses – the majority of whom were white – since 2015, according to the database. Of the nearly 700 people shot and killed by police so far this year, more than 100 had a mental illness.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...-health-solutions-training-defund/5763145002/

A "one in a million exception"?

Yeah, right.

 

Wow, I had no idea that these roles were commonplace. On-demand hotlines and stuff, sure, but I never realized face-to-face help for folks was routine.

As for this instance, I don't know what to say with the information we have. My prediction is that these events will occur again and again unless PDs are made to adopt new SOPs which give use-of-force discretion to the person requesting help. Ultimately though, I would like for people to bond with their immediate community so that they would first be inclined to knock on a neighbor's door for help instead of calling 911.

 

Yes, you prove my point eloquently, 100 mentally ill people shot in a year in a nation of over 300 million people and all those were justified shoot where the person posed a lethal threat to the police or others or was committing suicide by cop, out of all the millions of interactions the police have with the mentally ill during that time period.

When you have the facts on your side argue the facts, when you have the law on your side argue the law, when you have neither shout and bang the table and when you don't even have that break out the emojis.

 

Do some research, if you are very lucky you may live in a community that has access to 24/7 mental health teams as first responders, as and when needed. 95% of Americans don't. Depending on the time of day the family concerned would have basically 'lucked out' having mental health nurses/councilors turn up at their door in response to the original mental health emergency. In reality? after hours those kind of resources are few and far in between. Don't believe me? go and ask how many/how often teams like that are available in your community.

Which means that in most cases the first responder is some poor patrol officer who just happens to have the 'luck' to be on duty at the time and in the area when the call comes in.

So with all respect to the family concerned how would knowing there wasn't a mental health response team available at the time have changed anything? What was the operator supposed to say? 'Sorry there's no-one on-call at the moment, if you ring back in 8 hours we may be able to help' ? Their main complaint should be why weren't mental health experts available at the time, not why did the Police show up instead. There are always Police on duty 24/7.The same can't be said for the type of response they needed.

 

Yeah I don't know what the operator is supposed to do except exhaust their resources best they can. If I'm calling, I would definitely make sure I understand what the response would be too (ie confirm whether I just activated the police or the health experts).

I can't imagine a dedicated, standardized 24/7 crisis intervention service being disjoint from law enforcement though. If the correct grievance hits on such a service's availability, then it seems to me that increased police department funding is a necessary condition for the availability.

 

Ask around, I'm afraid you'll find that more often that not that is exactly the case. The problem is that law enforcement and mental health are two entirely separate strands of the public service. Both budgetary and in terms of reporting lines. This means that all too often you end up with a 'left hand not talking to the right hand scenario' - and its been that way for decades.

And its a world wide problem in the West. Mental health in general as a community issue has had almost no traction with governments anywhere for decades. That is changing (certainly at least where I live - we're seeing more investment in community mental health including first response) but the problem is that its a huge issue. Stats indicate that something like 20% of the population suffers from some form of mental health issue, albeit transitory or perhaps limited/minor in nature. Depending on the country concerned that still leaves a significant number of people who suffer from chronic/severe mental health issues.

Up until the late 20th century most of those people would be institutionalized. But Governments the world over were advised by mental health professionals that it would be more effective and humane to close down the institutions and provide community based care instead. The problem? They all jumped at the chance to save costs by closing down (expensive) mental health facilities then (strangely) balked at the cost of funding community based care programs, including first response options instead.

I mean really, who would have thought governments would put cost savings ahead of saving peoples lives? Or alternatively if you or someone you know/love doesn't suffer from a chronic mental health issue why should you pay for such care via your taxes. Bloody Government!

All of which means if you are street police officer 'congratulations' a significant % of your time will be spent dealing with mental health call outs. And there's no upside for you if you the first responder. It all goes well no-one knows, it all goes to s%^t? You end up all over the local papers. And yes sometimes (rarely) this is deservedly so - the vast majority of cases? It's not.

 

Your math seems like it’s way off to me. Can you provide your figures? How many mental health calls are police called out on a year? How many end up in a deadly shooting?

 

Apparently you don't know much about the mental health system here in the US. A person who is having a mental health crisis can be taken to a hospital where they will be admitted into a secure area and observed to see if their situation changes. If not they are then sent to a short term inpatient psychiatric hospital where doctors will attempt to stabilize the patient with medications. Most patients react positively to the medications and will be discharged within 4 to 7 days. A few may need to stay longer. If criminal activity is involved then the police will intervene on behalf of the family and take the person to jail where they may or may not get the treatment they need. That's the down side of our mental health system. Dangerous people who have severe mental health issues should not be put into facilities with other non-violent patients and staff. And this from the article showed the victim was in a hostile state of mind.

"Warren Jr. said Contreras's demeanor toward his family was hostile, so they asked him to leave. But moments later, he returned and knocked."

According to the article the day before the victim was shot a mental health professional did visit the family but unfortunately the victim did not get the help he needed to protect the family. A sad ending but when it comes to the mentally ill in our country people need to be protected from them as they can be very unpredictable.

 

LOL............Sure buddy......Had nothing to do with money right?

Ronald Reagan's shameful legacy: Violence, the homeless, mental illness
https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ro..._legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/

Mental Health Systems Act of 1980

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1980

U01: Ronald Reagan and the Federal Deinstitutionalization of Mentally Ill Patients

https://sites.psu.edu/psy533wheeler...tion-of-mentally-ill-patients/comment-page-1/

 

The way law enforcement works today, you are right.
It would take a special cop to see a mentally deranged person as someone to serve and protect rather than someone to subdue and dominate.

 

I like to remember Reagan as the guy who classified ketchup a vegetable so he could skim more money off school lunches for poor kids.

 

There isn’t enough info here to say who was right or wrong.

I wonder what the family told 911. If they told 911 the guy was threatening or out of control, I don’t think a mental health worker would respond to that until after the police responded and made sure it was safe for them.

 

Well, 'mental health issues' aside, what did Patrick Warren, Sr. do that caused the police officer to shoot him? The story referenced in the OP did not say, but until we know THAT, we don't really know 'squat'....

 

....

 

OK, but when the police officer got there, what did Patrick Warren, Sr. actually DO? Anything?

Why did the officer kill him? Does anybody know that...?

Realistically, people go nuts every day, but the cops usually just subdue them, cuff them, arrest them, and take them to the police station for further handling. The police don't customarily just haul off and KILL people unless there's an awfully good reason that they had to....

 

I misread the link so I deleted my post

 

The wrong person in the wrong place.

In Italy authorities send an ambulance with a police patrol [you can never know what a person with mental health problems can do].
To send only a police patrol is absurd.

A policeman [or a policewoman] is not expected to know how to deal with this kind of subject. He [or she] can be surprised, even shocked by the behavior of the subject and it may happen that the police officer uses his/her weapon.

So, the emergency management of that area is guilty.

 

This "blame game" crap our society has fallen to is getting sickening. Sometimes stuff happens... the world is not a perfect place. The family couldn't handle their family member... he was behaving so badly that they called the authorities... the authorities end up using deadly force. Who is to blame? The family? The mentally ill person? The policeman? The 911 operator? The city or county government? Crap happens... accept it. Stop thinking that the world around you has to be a perfect place, and when it doesn't suit you, let's find someone to blame. Bull crap. Half the problem with society is that we always have to place blame on the other guy. It is a bad place to be.