I feel for you. I am a mom of a Korean adoptee who now has to deal with the fallout of Asian discrimination from Covid. We have devolved or never evolved.
I’m sorry you and your family have dealt with that too. Complete ignorance!
Police are fallible, the military is fallible and nurses/docs are fallible. When people are in positions of power there is often overstretching of that power. Tough jobs all around and the solutions are not easy. But the solutions are not to "disband the pigs" which is plastered around my liberal/Western anti gun city. The irony is palpable. Anti gun and anti police is a funny mix.
Anyways I digress, police killings are nothing new to any race but so far I have not heard any good arguments from protesters calling for change. At least nothing that is within the realm of feasibility. Powerpoints and diversity ad nauseum for nurses or police isn't going to do much.
If you have never had to subdue someone with Herculean strength due to drug use, then you aren’t in a place to judge the over abundance of caution that police are trained to utilize in restraining people. Generally it’s for the person’s own good. Mistakes happen, sometimes people die, especially when people do things that don’t follow their training.
I was trained to place a knee between the shoulder blades and apply pressure while using joint manipulation to restrain the hands until help could arrive. I have no idea how the officer in this particular incident was trained. I sure wouldn’t have put my knee on someone’s neck. I also don’t understand why the help that arrived didn’t help. But I do certainly understand how fear of being overpowered by someone on drugs can drive you to make mistakes.
People are quick to judge things they personally don’t understand.
If you have never had to subdue someone with Herculean strength due to drug use, then you aren’t in a place to judge the over abundance of caution that police are trained to utilize in restraining people. Generally it’s for the person’s own good. Mistakes happen, sometimes people die, especially when people do things that don’t follow their training.
I was trained to place a knee between the shoulder blades and apply pressure while using joint manipulation to restrain the hands until help could arrive. I have no idea how the officer in this particular incident was trained. I sure wouldn’t have put my knee on someone’s neck. I also don’t understand why the help that arrived didn’t help. But I do certainly understand how fear of being overpowered by someone on drugs can drive you to make mistakes.
people are quick to judge things they personally don’t understand.
I agree with you that people who haven’t worked in law enforcement can often voice opinions about things they don’t fully understand and that they sometimes base their judgments on incomplete information. They may not have witnessed all the events leading up to a certain situation and they make a hasty judgment.
I’m a European nurse with a former career in law enforcement, ten years+ of experience under my belt. I am very much aware of the difficulties attempting to restrain an uncooperative/actively resisting individiual. Especially of they are physically strong, under the influence of certain drugs and in full panic mode.
Despite that, or rather because of that, I do judge these officers. The time for use of force is before you’ve gained control of the situation. Once the person is handcuffed and in the prone position, the situation/threat is different. What you need to do in that situation is to prevent the person from getting back up again, from spitting at you or biting you, you need to position yourself so he can’t easily kick you and you have to prevent him from causing himself harm.
I’ve had many incidents when the detained person tried to repeatedly smash his head full force on whatever hard surface he happened to be lying on, and of course that has to be stopped. But it isn’t exactly a genius move to kill him in order to stop him from injuring himself...
I have no idea how U.S. LEOs are trained but I was specifically trained to be mindful of positional asphyxia and that applying pressure, much less using your entire body weight focused on a relatively small area (knee), to a person’s neck or throat, was expressly forbidden. As was using your body weight to press down on a prone person’s back or a suppine handcuffed person’s chest. Regardless of training though, any adult ought to be able to figure out that sitting on person’s neck for close to nine minutes may pose a serious risk to that person’s health and life.
Your goal is for them to stop resisting and fighting you. A painful shoulder/arm lock might accomplish that. Compressing a person’s chest so they can’t expand their lungs or applying pressure to a person’s neck so sufficient air can’t pass won’t accomplish that, it will only make them panic. In that situation they are fighting for their lives and use every last ounce of strength they have. Until they can’t anymore.
Watching that video was deeply disturbing. Although I admittedly haven’t seen the entire nine minutes from all angles, there appears to have been three of them on the restrained, prone man at the same time for at least part of the time (neck, back and legs). The pain and panic he must have felt must have been torturous. I’m having trouble believing that the officers didn’t notice that the resistance/tension left the detained man’s body and that he became unresponsive. Were they concerned enough to regularly check for vital signs and take the appropriate actions based on their findings? I’ve seen no evidence of that. What I saw in that footage is in my opinion disgraceful as well as deeply disturbing behavior. It was painful to watch.
That police had 19 complaints filed against him and some were for excessive use of force. If that is not an ignored problem, I don't know what is.
Criminals love to file frivolous complaints. Whether or not his 19 were frivolous I do not know. I once had an inmate file a frivolous complaint (fabricated) because he was mad I confiscated contraband from his cell. Criminals don’t think like the rest of us. They lie for sport.
2 hours ago, macawake said:
I agree with you that people who haven’t .....
What I saw in the video goes against the training I received as well. Mind boggling.
Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
9 hours ago, DesiDani said:
0nline, some say that police unions are the cause of bad cops staying on.
9 hours ago, heron said:
Of course they do ... heaven forfend that management should be held accountable for their willful negligence.
Heron is right. Blaming the unions is a standard tactic for weak management to avoid accountability. All a union can legally do is ensure that disciplinary action and termination are done according to the contract. There is NO union contract that stipulates a bad actor gets to keep his job.
In addition to the 3 other police officers now being charged, there should certainly be more scrutiny of the brass that allowed this situation to continue to this point.
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rebeccaUTA
104 Posts
I’m sorry you and your family have dealt with that too. Complete ignorance!