7 ms·

Police broke into Chelsea Manning’s home with guns drawn in a “Wellness Check”

106 points by hoophoop 8y ago

codedokode 8y ago
> In 2017, mental illness played a role in a quarter of 987 police killings, Can we say that police officers kill more people than terrorists do?
- daten 8y ago
  That's a very vague anecdote. If someone affected by mental illness is prepared to harm themselves or others in the process, including "mass shooters", then police being prepared to respond in a way that minimizes overall harm may be appropriate. Saying it "played a role" in 25% of a number of killings, could easily include a set of completely unrelated types of situations and mental illnesses. It also doesn't begin to describe how many lives may have been saved in each of those situations, or countless others that didn't involve "killings". Finally, do you have any idea how many deaths, people we can reasonably call "terrorists", are responsible for throughout the world? Including conflicts throughout the middle east with nearly daily bombings? Or are you only counting a few high-profile incidents in the United States?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    > Or are you only counting a few high-profile incidents in the United States? Though I tentatively agree with the rest of your comment, the original comparison was to stats only in America.
  - sbjustin 8y ago
    Didn't read your comment first. I completely agree with you here.
- RoyTyrell 8y ago
  I would be surprised if terrorists killed more people. That isn't to say that terrorism should be taken lightly because they could get "lucky" and kill lots of people. While a scary issue, due to the proximity of the US (minus local terrorists like the alt-right groups) we are largely shielded from it. Hell drunk drivers kill passengers and those in other vehicles every year far more than terrorism has minus in 2001. I wonder how many police officer killings are due to "suicide by cop".
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    Even including 2001 the drunk drivers are winning by a factor of about 3. September 11 2001 terrorist attacks: 2,996 dead.[1] Here's some data for the previous few years[2], and 2016: In 2016, 10,497 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for 28% of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.[3] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11... 2. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812350 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... 3 . https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impa...
    - candu 8y ago
      xkcd, "Driving Cars": https://xkcd.com/1990/ https://xkcd.com/1990/
  - bigiain 8y ago
    > I wonder how many police officer killings are due to "suicide by cop". That wouldn't even be a thing if they weren't so trigger happy and unaccountable. How did it ever even get to be a thing?
    - Shivetya 8y ago
      Television and in some movies. don't under estimate the influence that has on some who want to harm themselves but lack the conviction to do themselves in without harming others. The idea that cops are trigger happy is ignorant, if that were even remotely true the number of shootings and deaths by cop would be so high as to not warrant news stories. As in, it would be common place. Fortunately we are far from it being commonplace that shootings and even weapon discharges by cops are news worthy. Yes we have bad cops just like we have bad actors in many other occupations. The difference is that we don't put people in other occupations in harms way on a day to day basis. that isn't to say being a cop is the most hazardous job you can have, work place deaths are higher for many other fields. We also cannot say that cops cause an unreasonable number of deaths by their actions, if anything we need to account for all the deaths they prevent by their training and mere presence.
- sbjustin 8y ago
  Not quite sure what the implication here. I'm very confident that every one of those police officers lives with that horror every single day. While I completely agree that mental health should be treated better and have more options available; you can never know if the person just wants to harm themselves or take the officer down too.
- influx 8y ago
  https://healthresearchfunding.org/surprising-suicide-cop-statistics/ https://healthresearchfunding.org/surprising-suicide-cop-sta... It is absurd to leave out the fact that many of these killings were intentionally initiated by suicidal mentally ill people.
  - Zigurd 8y ago
    It's not absurd if you compare outcomes to other industrialized nations.
- IanDrake 8y ago
  “Why” is far more important than how many.
- CWuestefeld 8y ago
  We can also say that the police steal more from people than non-sanctioned thieves do. In 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from American citizens than burglars did. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/?utm_term=.7f67e8128782 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    Your description of the facts in the article is sloppy. Law enforcement seized more than burglars stole. Throw in other theft crimes and crime wins. And if you take out the Madoff case (a $1.7 billion case of law enforcement run amuck if there ever was one...), seizures didn't even top out burglaries. Of course now someone can shrilly denounce me for defending asset forfeiture, but that isn't my point.
slfnflctd 8y ago
> "The problem, mental health experts say, is that police should not be the ones to check on suicidal people in the first place." This is a very uninformed statement. For 911 and/or police calls, there is an extensively well-established (to put it mildly) precedent that the safety of an area must be secured by police before medical personnel are even allowed on scene. There are very good reasons for this-- you don't want to have your primary emergency medical responders taken out by a delusional shooter when other emergencies will be coming up soon that require them, all too often for matters of life & death. > " 'The moral of this story is don’t call the cops,' Cassandra said. “If you know someone who is having a mental health crisis, call a friend, a trusted neighbor, or someone close by who can safely intervene. Keep the number to a volunteer emergency medical service in your city or neighborhood that can be called directly" This I agree with. For people familiar with the situation and person/people involved (if they exist), a much more appropriate response can be conducted. There are numerous accounts of these situations leading to the arrest of the individual in crisis, which of course can make things much, much worse for them. I know someone it happened to.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- iainmerrick 8y ago
  Re "uninformed", I think it's more a question of whose interest is at stake. For the health of the suicidal person (which I assume is the angle the mental health experts are coming from) it's very dangerous for the first contact to be armed police because there's a large risk that they'll be shot. It could also be true that it's safer for the police, bystanders, and even those mental health experts themselves, for the first contact to be armed police. But that scenario is just another one to add to the US gun control debate. Generally speaking, this stuff hardly ever occurs in other countries. It's a special US thing.
  - JulianMorrison 8y ago
    I believe the police would be the ones to bust a door and check on someone thought to be in immediate danger over here in the UK, too. The difference being that they wouldn't be going in guns drawn as if they were conducting a military raid.
maxehmookau 8y ago
> “It’s not necessary for police to be the first responders when somebody calls 911 and says they’re suicidal...” When your country is missing any sort of universal state "help" for your health, then what other option is there?
- ItsMe000001 8y ago
  Apart from sending state officials to help the suicidal people to once and for all accomplish their spontaneous wish created by a brain malfunction? Maybe check how other countries do this, where less people get shot by police for whatever reason (in which I don't take sides, the cops are only the last elements in a much longer chain and have to deal with everything that went wrong long before as the "solution of last resort - by force"). I also find it fascinating that responses seen in other comments sound completely reasonable (and are reasonable, given the chosen perspective) when they justify that what happened is exactly what had to happen (cops may be called to dangerous places, and it's a fact that that happens to them all the time). Yet, when looking at it from a different, much farther away perspective from a country where I would expect such police behavior only in very few extreme cases (and only carried out by special police forces, of which there are not many), it does not seem reasonable at all. Again, I understand the cops, I might act just like them if I had to live their life. So something other than police tactics may be a causal reason, because if cops actually are in danger routinely than their measures make sense.
  - iainmerrick 8y ago
    Like so many other situations, I think this can be cast as a Prisoner's Dilemma. :) All else being equal, whether or not other people have guns, you'll be safer if you have a gun. But that apparently rational argument leads to everybody having guns, which is much less safe for everybody. But there's an extra twist -- you are actually not safer with a gun all else being equal, because you or your loved ones could be killed by that gun through accident, suicide, etc.
stevespang 8y ago
Intimidation of the highest order, likely swatting.
sbjustin 8y ago
The police are trained to go in first and clear the situation. The problem isn't that you should be afraid to call the police for suicide concerns, it's what happens next. Our system has completely failed the the suicidal, mentally ill, etc. You have almost no legitimate options for help. I recently heard of a story of someone who was put in jail when they threatened their own life. It's not the police's fault though, they have no options to them.
- bigiain 8y ago
  > The problem isn't that you should be afraid to call the police for suicide concerns Right. The problem, for a disturbingly large section of the community, is that they are afraid to call the cops for _anything_.
- bigiain 8y ago
  > The police are trained to ... Yeah, so "police training". I'm perhaps a little less prepared to attribute purely positive outcomes from that. http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-06/victoria-police-officer-simon-mareangareu-punched-kyan-foster/9842344 http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-06/victoria-police-off... "A Victorian police officer has told a jury he punched a teenager in the face as hard as he could, in line with his training, after the boy hit him on the forearm." and: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/22/ipcc-concern-over-police-tasers-compliance https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/22/ipcc-concern-o... "Police officers have been accused of using Tasers to inflict pain to gain compliance, a report by the police watchdog says. Concerns are also raised about the use of Tasers on suspects already in custody, in the findings by the Independent Police Complaints Commission." "IPCC commissioner James Dipple-Johnstone said: "When used in this way it is purely a means of pain compliance. Yet in several of the cases we reviewed, where it was used for the purpose of gaining compliance, it had the opposite effect, stimulating further resistance.""
- cmiles74 8y ago
  It is clear in the article that the police were not accompanied by any medical personnel. The police were the only people sent to the scene. I would argue that you should not be calling the police unless you are literally in fear for your life. Bringing the police, guns drawn, into your home or where ever you may be is only going to increase the chances of a gun being fired. In my opinion, this article highlights the reality that the police do, in fact, approach everything from a robbery to a reported suicide to a loudly barking dog in exactly the same way: guns drawn.
fortythirteen 8y ago
> Police entered the home a potentially highly mentally ill, dishonorably discharged, felon veteran, once convicted of violating the Espionage Act, after she publicly threatened to commit suicide. They had their weapons drawn, because it was unknown if she was armed. FIFY
milge 8y ago
This sounds like it was an assassination attempt. I'd move out of the country.
- jrs95 8y ago
  There’s no reason to use a large number of police to do that. Way too many people are involved and it’s too public.
  - milge 8y ago
    It's literally the perfect way to do this. The large number of people account for each other. And since police murders in the US are so common, people would glaze right over the headline. An assassination with no witnesses would stir up more questions.
    - IanDrake 8y ago
      Police murders are exceptionally rare in the US. Where are you getting your stats from? Also note, you used the word “murder” wrong. Perhaps you meant something else?
      - gambiting 8y ago
        What else would you call it? If someone calls a SWAT team to an address to scare someone, and the police enter and kill the person even if they are unarmed and innocent, what else it if not murder?
        IanDrake 8y ago
        You're asking two different questions. First, when one human kills another human, it's either a legally justified killing or murder. The majority of policy killings are justified and not murder. So that's "what else" anyone who understand the law and the English language would call it...unless you're just trying to stir things up with rhetoric. In that case you'd just use whatever word generates the most outrage ignoring the fact that you've used the word wrong. As to your second question, I would call that murder. I would absolutely blame the person who called in the swatting, and depending on what happened I would blame the police. Every police shooting has different circumstances. You can't lump them into one bucket and pass judgement. There are very few instances of police murdering someone. I never claimed it doesn't happen, but "And since police murders in the US are so common" is just outright incorrect.
MaupitiBlue 8y ago
Why do we let the insane roam free? Perhaps if the insane were properly secured, they wouldn’t be getting shot by the police when they have an episode?
- jrs95 8y ago
  Psychiatric drugs are too profitable, and sanitariums threatens the constant invention and sale of expensive psychiatric drugs. Although in my opinion nobody should ever be involuntarily committed. They should have to commit a crime, and there should be special prisons for the mentally ill. Otherwise consent of the patient or a legal guardian should be required. It’s sort of a slippery slope to allow people to be declared insane by the state and locked away with little or no physical evidence.
- ldh 8y ago
  I hereby deem you insane. Now what?
  - MaupitiBlue 8y ago
    You get locked up. If, sometime in the future, a cure for schizophrenia is developed, out you go. But otherwise, you’re just a ticking timebomb until that day where you go off the meds and explode.
    - xnnn 8y ago
      Unless you are trolling, you have firmly established your insanity (or IQ below 80).
    - iainmerrick 8y ago
      You get locked up No, what the parent is getting at is, you should say "I get locked up." You personally, whether you think you're schizophrenic or not. Are you happy with this situation? If you think you're sane, how do you prove it and how do you get out? This isn't an abstract question. Locking healthy people up in asylums is something that has happened many times in history.
    - 8y ago
jaimex2 8y ago
Reading the comments from Australia, is it fair to say things are this way due to no gun control? Every comment seems to miss what seems obvious to me. Since the chance of armed encounters is high the Police have to respond this way to every scenario or risk getting shot.
- jrs95 8y ago
  Police entering someone’s home are going to have to be prepared even if there was a very low chance of encountering someone with a gun. If you’re going into a house and you don’t know where someone is, pretty much any kind of lethal weapon is going to be a serious risk. If they weren’t risking being shot, they’d be risking being stabbed.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    Except that in UK if someone calls the police to go and check on someone, they won't even have a gun on them. They will knock, enter and leave, without having a gun drawn or even on their person. They will have a baton or a taser, but not a gun. The only situation when a gun would be released for use is if the caller identified the situation as dangerous. But a "wellness" check on someone? Absolutely not.
    - jrs95 8y ago
      This is a good point. I think it’s difficult to argue that gun control doesn’t save lives in these situations or even overall. But then your options for armed resistance against the state are quite limited, which is the entire purpose of the second amendment anyways. It literally has nothing to do with hunting or sport.
      - krapp 8y ago
        >But then your options for armed resistance against the state are quite limited, which is the entire purpose of the second amendment anyways. That oft-cited point becomes less valid when one considers that armed revolutions can occur and have occurred without an explicit right of gun ownership having being granted by the state beforehand.
to_bpr 8y ago
Over-the-top, drama seeking narcissist posts some crazy shit on the internet, including pictures of her looking down on a street as though she's about to jump to her death, gets the attention she sought and then cries foul? >“If Chelsea had been home when these cops arrived with guns drawn, she would be dead.” Barf. The sooner the world forgets this particular person, the better.
- sschueller 8y ago
  Wow, shooting the messenger. One of so many war crimes committed by the united states yet again people are attacking the person who exposed them.
- spark3k 8y ago
  Way to completely miss the point. You're saying the appropriate action for someone assumed to be likely to harm themselves is a show of deadly force? Brilliant. Well you have the society you want.
- mcherm 8y ago
  So I'm curious. It sounds like you object to Ms. Manning's publicity seeking, which is a position that I can understand, regardless of whether I agree with it. Separated from the question of how the incident gained enough attention to appear on Hacker News, how do you feel about the police response in this incident? Or does your distaste for Ms. Manning prevent you from considering it dispassionately?
  - to_bpr 8y ago
    The person in question has shown themselves to be highly unstable while also being the beneficiary of military training. I believe approaching the incident in a discreet manner but prepared for the worst was prudent.
Simulacra 8y ago
I see no problem here. She did make posts that appeared to be threatening suicide. Police are typically the first ones who can get to the scene. Their job is to save lives, and this was a legitimate exercise of that job. People are trying to make this political, about gun control, or some conspiracy, and I think that’s wrong.
inevitable2 8y ago
> “If Chelsea had been home when these cops arrived with guns drawn, she would be dead.” That statement is a little over the top. That isn't to say I agree or disagree with the guns being drawn but the article makes it sound somewhat like when a cop has their gun drawn someone is going to get shot which isn't the case.
oliwarner 8y ago
Guns drawn in case they arrive to find an unstable person armed with a gun threatening to shoot back. This isn't indicative of a police state, it's indicative of a state where guns are too readily available to people with mental health issues.
mnm1 8y ago
So she got swatted. Let's call it what it is. She got swatted because some assholes decided to call the cops on her. Those assholes' intentions are irrelevant. If you call the cops on someone in America, you should expect the police to show up with guns and possibly shoot that person. That's what they do; that's mostly all they do. As a society, we've decided that the police should show up in many situations where they are not needed, like medical emergencies, and have also decided to give them the right to murder with impunity and without consequences (see qualified immunity). This is what happens when you give a bunch of bullies who barely graduated high school guns and power: complete abuse of that power leading to hundreds or thousands of unnecessary deaths a year; not to mention all the non-lethal violence they also cause being essentially the largest gang in the nation. Americans need to learn that the police are not their friends and teach their children that. Police will not save you when there is a real threat. Police will stand back, hidden, away from danger just like they did in so many school shootings. They do not give a fuck about you, your kids, or your safety. They do not give a fuck about your life or anyone's life other than theirs (something they constantly talk about on every single cop show ever, in case you doubt this claim). I truly cannot think of a single positive thing police do in our society or any reason to call them, ever. Not one.

106 points by hoophoop 8y ago

> In 2017, mental illness played a role in a quarter of 987 police killings, Can we say that police officers kill more people than terrorists do?

daten 8y ago
That's a very vague anecdote. If someone affected by mental illness is prepared to harm themselves or others in the process, including "mass shooters", then police being prepared to respond in a way that minimizes overall harm may be appropriate. Saying it "played a role" in 25% of a number of killings, could easily include a set of completely unrelated types of situations and mental illnesses. It also doesn't begin to describe how many lives may have been saved in each of those situations, or countless others that didn't involve "killings". Finally, do you have any idea how many deaths, people we can reasonably call "terrorists", are responsible for throughout the world? Including conflicts throughout the middle east with nearly daily bombings? Or are you only counting a few high-profile incidents in the United States?
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  > Or are you only counting a few high-profile incidents in the United States? Though I tentatively agree with the rest of your comment, the original comparison was to stats only in America.
- sbjustin 8y ago
  Didn't read your comment first. I completely agree with you here.
RoyTyrell 8y ago
I would be surprised if terrorists killed more people. That isn't to say that terrorism should be taken lightly because they could get "lucky" and kill lots of people. While a scary issue, due to the proximity of the US (minus local terrorists like the alt-right groups) we are largely shielded from it. Hell drunk drivers kill passengers and those in other vehicles every year far more than terrorism has minus in 2001. I wonder how many police officer killings are due to "suicide by cop".
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  Even including 2001 the drunk drivers are winning by a factor of about 3. September 11 2001 terrorist attacks: 2,996 dead.[1] Here's some data for the previous few years[2], and 2016: In 2016, 10,497 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for 28% of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.[3] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11... 2. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812350 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... 3 . https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impa...
  - candu 8y ago
    xkcd, "Driving Cars": https://xkcd.com/1990/ https://xkcd.com/1990/
- bigiain 8y ago
  > I wonder how many police officer killings are due to "suicide by cop". That wouldn't even be a thing if they weren't so trigger happy and unaccountable. How did it ever even get to be a thing?
  - Shivetya 8y ago
    Television and in some movies. don't under estimate the influence that has on some who want to harm themselves but lack the conviction to do themselves in without harming others. The idea that cops are trigger happy is ignorant, if that were even remotely true the number of shootings and deaths by cop would be so high as to not warrant news stories. As in, it would be common place. Fortunately we are far from it being commonplace that shootings and even weapon discharges by cops are news worthy. Yes we have bad cops just like we have bad actors in many other occupations. The difference is that we don't put people in other occupations in harms way on a day to day basis. that isn't to say being a cop is the most hazardous job you can have, work place deaths are higher for many other fields. We also cannot say that cops cause an unreasonable number of deaths by their actions, if anything we need to account for all the deaths they prevent by their training and mere presence.
sbjustin 8y ago
Not quite sure what the implication here. I'm very confident that every one of those police officers lives with that horror every single day. While I completely agree that mental health should be treated better and have more options available; you can never know if the person just wants to harm themselves or take the officer down too.
influx 8y ago
https://healthresearchfunding.org/surprising-suicide-cop-statistics/ https://healthresearchfunding.org/surprising-suicide-cop-sta... It is absurd to leave out the fact that many of these killings were intentionally initiated by suicidal mentally ill people.
- Zigurd 8y ago
  It's not absurd if you compare outcomes to other industrialized nations.
IanDrake 8y ago
“Why” is far more important than how many.
CWuestefeld 8y ago
We can also say that the police steal more from people than non-sanctioned thieves do. In 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from American citizens than burglars did. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/?utm_term=.7f67e8128782 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...
- maxerickson 8y ago
  Your description of the facts in the article is sloppy. Law enforcement seized more than burglars stole. Throw in other theft crimes and crime wins. And if you take out the Madoff case (a $1.7 billion case of law enforcement run amuck if there ever was one...), seizures didn't even top out burglaries. Of course now someone can shrilly denounce me for defending asset forfeiture, but that isn't my point.

slfnflctd 8y ago

> "The problem, mental health experts say, is that police should not be the ones to check on suicidal people in the first place." This is a very uninformed statement. For 911 and/or police calls, there is an extensively well-established (to put it mildly) precedent that the safety of an area must be secured by police before medical personnel are even allowed on scene. There are very good reasons for this-- you don't want to have your primary emergency medical responders taken out by a delusional shooter when other emergencies will be coming up soon that require them, all too often for matters of life & death. > " 'The moral of this story is don’t call the cops,' Cassandra said. “If you know someone who is having a mental health crisis, call a friend, a trusted neighbor, or someone close by who can safely intervene. Keep the number to a volunteer emergency medical service in your city or neighborhood that can be called directly" This I agree with. For people familiar with the situation and person/people involved (if they exist), a much more appropriate response can be conducted. There are numerous accounts of these situations leading to the arrest of the individual in crisis, which of course can make things much, much worse for them. I know someone it happened to.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
iainmerrick 8y ago
Re "uninformed", I think it's more a question of whose interest is at stake. For the health of the suicidal person (which I assume is the angle the mental health experts are coming from) it's very dangerous for the first contact to be armed police because there's a large risk that they'll be shot. It could also be true that it's safer for the police, bystanders, and even those mental health experts themselves, for the first contact to be armed police. But that scenario is just another one to add to the US gun control debate. Generally speaking, this stuff hardly ever occurs in other countries. It's a special US thing.
- JulianMorrison 8y ago
  I believe the police would be the ones to bust a door and check on someone thought to be in immediate danger over here in the UK, too. The difference being that they wouldn't be going in guns drawn as if they were conducting a military raid.

maxehmookau 8y ago

> “It’s not necessary for police to be the first responders when somebody calls 911 and says they’re suicidal...” When your country is missing any sort of universal state "help" for your health, then what other option is there?

ItsMe000001 8y ago
Apart from sending state officials to help the suicidal people to once and for all accomplish their spontaneous wish created by a brain malfunction? Maybe check how other countries do this, where less people get shot by police for whatever reason (in which I don't take sides, the cops are only the last elements in a much longer chain and have to deal with everything that went wrong long before as the "solution of last resort - by force"). I also find it fascinating that responses seen in other comments sound completely reasonable (and are reasonable, given the chosen perspective) when they justify that what happened is exactly what had to happen (cops may be called to dangerous places, and it's a fact that that happens to them all the time). Yet, when looking at it from a different, much farther away perspective from a country where I would expect such police behavior only in very few extreme cases (and only carried out by special police forces, of which there are not many), it does not seem reasonable at all. Again, I understand the cops, I might act just like them if I had to live their life. So something other than police tactics may be a causal reason, because if cops actually are in danger routinely than their measures make sense.
- iainmerrick 8y ago
  Like so many other situations, I think this can be cast as a Prisoner's Dilemma. :) All else being equal, whether or not other people have guns, you'll be safer if you have a gun. But that apparently rational argument leads to everybody having guns, which is much less safe for everybody. But there's an extra twist -- you are actually not safer with a gun all else being equal, because you or your loved ones could be killed by that gun through accident, suicide, etc.

stevespang 8y ago

Intimidation of the highest order, likely swatting.

sbjustin 8y ago

The police are trained to go in first and clear the situation. The problem isn't that you should be afraid to call the police for suicide concerns, it's what happens next. Our system has completely failed the the suicidal, mentally ill, etc. You have almost no legitimate options for help. I recently heard of a story of someone who was put in jail when they threatened their own life. It's not the police's fault though, they have no options to them.

bigiain 8y ago
> The problem isn't that you should be afraid to call the police for suicide concerns Right. The problem, for a disturbingly large section of the community, is that they are afraid to call the cops for _anything_.
bigiain 8y ago
> The police are trained to ... Yeah, so "police training". I'm perhaps a little less prepared to attribute purely positive outcomes from that. http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-06/victoria-police-officer-simon-mareangareu-punched-kyan-foster/9842344 http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-06/victoria-police-off... "A Victorian police officer has told a jury he punched a teenager in the face as hard as he could, in line with his training, after the boy hit him on the forearm." and: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/22/ipcc-concern-over-police-tasers-compliance https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/22/ipcc-concern-o... "Police officers have been accused of using Tasers to inflict pain to gain compliance, a report by the police watchdog says. Concerns are also raised about the use of Tasers on suspects already in custody, in the findings by the Independent Police Complaints Commission." "IPCC commissioner James Dipple-Johnstone said: "When used in this way it is purely a means of pain compliance. Yet in several of the cases we reviewed, where it was used for the purpose of gaining compliance, it had the opposite effect, stimulating further resistance.""
cmiles74 8y ago
It is clear in the article that the police were not accompanied by any medical personnel. The police were the only people sent to the scene. I would argue that you should not be calling the police unless you are literally in fear for your life. Bringing the police, guns drawn, into your home or where ever you may be is only going to increase the chances of a gun being fired. In my opinion, this article highlights the reality that the police do, in fact, approach everything from a robbery to a reported suicide to a loudly barking dog in exactly the same way: guns drawn.

fortythirteen 8y ago

> Police entered the home a potentially highly mentally ill, dishonorably discharged, felon veteran, once convicted of violating the Espionage Act, after she publicly threatened to commit suicide. They had their weapons drawn, because it was unknown if she was armed. FIFY

milge 8y ago

This sounds like it was an assassination attempt. I'd move out of the country.

jrs95 8y ago
There’s no reason to use a large number of police to do that. Way too many people are involved and it’s too public.
- milge 8y ago
  It's literally the perfect way to do this. The large number of people account for each other. And since police murders in the US are so common, people would glaze right over the headline. An assassination with no witnesses would stir up more questions.
  - IanDrake 8y ago
    Police murders are exceptionally rare in the US. Where are you getting your stats from? Also note, you used the word “murder” wrong. Perhaps you meant something else?
    - gambiting 8y ago
      What else would you call it? If someone calls a SWAT team to an address to scare someone, and the police enter and kill the person even if they are unarmed and innocent, what else it if not murder?
      - IanDrake 8y ago
        You're asking two different questions. First, when one human kills another human, it's either a legally justified killing or murder. The majority of policy killings are justified and not murder. So that's "what else" anyone who understand the law and the English language would call it...unless you're just trying to stir things up with rhetoric. In that case you'd just use whatever word generates the most outrage ignoring the fact that you've used the word wrong. As to your second question, I would call that murder. I would absolutely blame the person who called in the swatting, and depending on what happened I would blame the police. Every police shooting has different circumstances. You can't lump them into one bucket and pass judgement. There are very few instances of police murdering someone. I never claimed it doesn't happen, but "And since police murders in the US are so common" is just outright incorrect.

MaupitiBlue 8y ago

Why do we let the insane roam free? Perhaps if the insane were properly secured, they wouldn’t be getting shot by the police when they have an episode?

jrs95 8y ago
Psychiatric drugs are too profitable, and sanitariums threatens the constant invention and sale of expensive psychiatric drugs. Although in my opinion nobody should ever be involuntarily committed. They should have to commit a crime, and there should be special prisons for the mentally ill. Otherwise consent of the patient or a legal guardian should be required. It’s sort of a slippery slope to allow people to be declared insane by the state and locked away with little or no physical evidence.
ldh 8y ago
I hereby deem you insane. Now what?
- MaupitiBlue 8y ago
  You get locked up. If, sometime in the future, a cure for schizophrenia is developed, out you go. But otherwise, you’re just a ticking timebomb until that day where you go off the meds and explode.
  - xnnn 8y ago
    Unless you are trolling, you have firmly established your insanity (or IQ below 80).
  - iainmerrick 8y ago
    You get locked up No, what the parent is getting at is, you should say "I get locked up." You personally, whether you think you're schizophrenic or not. Are you happy with this situation? If you think you're sane, how do you prove it and how do you get out? This isn't an abstract question. Locking healthy people up in asylums is something that has happened many times in history.
  - 8y ago

jaimex2 8y ago

Reading the comments from Australia, is it fair to say things are this way due to no gun control? Every comment seems to miss what seems obvious to me. Since the chance of armed encounters is high the Police have to respond this way to every scenario or risk getting shot.

jrs95 8y ago
Police entering someone’s home are going to have to be prepared even if there was a very low chance of encountering someone with a gun. If you’re going into a house and you don’t know where someone is, pretty much any kind of lethal weapon is going to be a serious risk. If they weren’t risking being shot, they’d be risking being stabbed.
- gambiting 8y ago
  Except that in UK if someone calls the police to go and check on someone, they won't even have a gun on them. They will knock, enter and leave, without having a gun drawn or even on their person. They will have a baton or a taser, but not a gun. The only situation when a gun would be released for use is if the caller identified the situation as dangerous. But a "wellness" check on someone? Absolutely not.
  - jrs95 8y ago
    This is a good point. I think it’s difficult to argue that gun control doesn’t save lives in these situations or even overall. But then your options for armed resistance against the state are quite limited, which is the entire purpose of the second amendment anyways. It literally has nothing to do with hunting or sport.
    - krapp 8y ago
      >But then your options for armed resistance against the state are quite limited, which is the entire purpose of the second amendment anyways. That oft-cited point becomes less valid when one considers that armed revolutions can occur and have occurred without an explicit right of gun ownership having being granted by the state beforehand.

to_bpr 8y ago

Over-the-top, drama seeking narcissist posts some crazy shit on the internet, including pictures of her looking down on a street as though she's about to jump to her death, gets the attention she sought and then cries foul? >“If Chelsea had been home when these cops arrived with guns drawn, she would be dead.” Barf. The sooner the world forgets this particular person, the better.

sschueller 8y ago
Wow, shooting the messenger. One of so many war crimes committed by the united states yet again people are attacking the person who exposed them.
spark3k 8y ago
Way to completely miss the point. You're saying the appropriate action for someone assumed to be likely to harm themselves is a show of deadly force? Brilliant. Well you have the society you want.
mcherm 8y ago
So I'm curious. It sounds like you object to Ms. Manning's publicity seeking, which is a position that I can understand, regardless of whether I agree with it. Separated from the question of how the incident gained enough attention to appear on Hacker News, how do you feel about the police response in this incident? Or does your distaste for Ms. Manning prevent you from considering it dispassionately?
- to_bpr 8y ago
  The person in question has shown themselves to be highly unstable while also being the beneficiary of military training. I believe approaching the incident in a discreet manner but prepared for the worst was prudent.

Simulacra 8y ago

I see no problem here. She did make posts that appeared to be threatening suicide. Police are typically the first ones who can get to the scene. Their job is to save lives, and this was a legitimate exercise of that job. People are trying to make this political, about gun control, or some conspiracy, and I think that’s wrong.

inevitable2 8y ago

> “If Chelsea had been home when these cops arrived with guns drawn, she would be dead.” That statement is a little over the top. That isn't to say I agree or disagree with the guns being drawn but the article makes it sound somewhat like when a cop has their gun drawn someone is going to get shot which isn't the case.

oliwarner 8y ago

Guns drawn in case they arrive to find an unstable person armed with a gun threatening to shoot back. This isn't indicative of a police state, it's indicative of a state where guns are too readily available to people with mental health issues.

mnm1 8y ago

So she got swatted. Let's call it what it is. She got swatted because some assholes decided to call the cops on her. Those assholes' intentions are irrelevant. If you call the cops on someone in America, you should expect the police to show up with guns and possibly shoot that person. That's what they do; that's mostly all they do. As a society, we've decided that the police should show up in many situations where they are not needed, like medical emergencies, and have also decided to give them the right to murder with impunity and without consequences (see qualified immunity). This is what happens when you give a bunch of bullies who barely graduated high school guns and power: complete abuse of that power leading to hundreds or thousands of unnecessary deaths a year; not to mention all the non-lethal violence they also cause being essentially the largest gang in the nation. Americans need to learn that the police are not their friends and teach their children that. Police will not save you when there is a real threat. Police will stand back, hidden, away from danger just like they did in so many school shootings. They do not give a fuck about you, your kids, or your safety. They do not give a fuck about your life or anyone's life other than theirs (something they constantly talk about on every single cop show ever, in case you doubt this claim). I truly cannot think of a single positive thing police do in our society or any reason to call them, ever. Not one.