true, but in inpatient settings they have tools at their disposal and a context supporting safety that you lack. they have - locked doors, lots of people who can be summoned, people trained to restrain, injectable medication. probably other stuff i’m not thinking about. there’s likely also an increased understanding of that person’s issues, level of risk, and current medication and sobriety. even several hours of observation plus a secure environment gives staffers an advantage police lack.

so i work in mental health. it is very likely that i will have to call police on a client at some point. i have training that works well in some circumstances, but there are limits. i have, in fact, been one of the people here on lemmy that has pointed out people working with others with mental illness and disability manage things without guns.

i think police need training to work with people like this and to de-escalate in general. i think i lot of them need treatment for their own PTSD. i think they fucked up here.

but i don’t think it’s realistic either to think that they can, in practice, handle things the same way a nurse with many years of experience and additional tools can. and i would also point out that many social workers (not my profession but related, just the last field i saw stats on) have been assaulted by their clients.

i think the parents could have handled it better. i think it’s possible cultural attitudes toward mental illness or other factors unique to the family played a part in their decision-making.

and as another parent of a person with developmental disability (plus serious mental illness), i think it is wise to prepare yourself and your child for how you might handle circumstances in which you or someone else needs to call for help. i don’t think it is safest for your child or for you (or others, obviously) for you to refuse to call until there is a body.

but i also understand that your experience and your child are not the same as mine.

i just wish the cops hadn’t fucked up, and i wish the family had done it differently. for all the good that does.

edit - extra words, a wrong word

First of all, I’m not advocating for the police.

I clearly stated in my first post that the police did not handle the situation correctly because they did use lethal force and they did not wait for the ambulance when they said multiple times they would.

What I’m stating is that everyone involved had a part in passing the buck of responsibility to the next party until ultimately the end result was almost assuredly going to be bodily harm to Yong Yang.

Please, I hope you didn’t take my hypothetical as an attack, I think based on the emoji you understood my position.

As to your hypothetical, I do understand. I had a cousin that was autistic, probably mid-slightly high functioning, and he did not understand how to adjust his “strength” when putting hands on people while joking vs angry and it resulted in many situations where we had to separate him from the younger children that didn’t know how to guard themselves appropriately.

My point is that even in a controlled environment, its difficult to handle these situations and ultimately my experiences have informed me enough that despite how much I loved my cousin, I needed to think about the people around him first in certain circumstances.

My cousin is no longer living, he had a heart attack; however, despite his inability to control his strength, I did allow him to be around my kids, but never alone and never without me being on pins and needles the entire time. Its sad to say that, but ultimately I am just glad he and them got to interact. It brought joy to both of them equally, I’m sure.

But to answer my own hypothetical, I wouldn’t hesitate to call the cops if I knew my cousin had done something wrong even if he didn’t believe he had. At a certain point, I believe you have to put aside your concern for the unstable person and think more about the ones that could be potentially hurt.