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It sounds to me like goodells is relating their experiences. > Presumably there would be some up front report and assessment of whether the person is exhibitin
by bigbubba 6y ago
It sounds to me like goodells is relating their experiences.
> Presumably there would be some up front report and assessment of whether the person is exhibiting violent behavior.
That's a very presumptuous thing to presume, when the person who actually has personal experience with the matter says that dispatch is notorious for misevaluating situations (surely through no fault of their own much of the time, since dispatch is not on the scene and can only relay what they've been told.)
- bluntfang 6y agoIt's just as presumptuous that every mentally ill person is carrying a firearm and is violent.
- dageshi 6y agoIt only takes one to kill you? I think that's op's point.
- spoondan 6y agoBut it isn’t a good point absent the bad assumption that the mentally ill are more dangerous. It only takes one bicyclist that’s fallen off his bike to kill you. So what?
- dageshi 6y agoIt isn't just the aspect of someone being mentally ill, it's someone being mentally ill and that their behaviour caused the police to be contacted.
- joshuamorton 6y agoThis is a symptom of people being to primed to believe that mentally ill people are dangerous, not a legitimate cause for concern. Purple call the police on someone yelling. A mentally ill person yelling isn't a danger. They might be in crisis or pain, or they might be unable to effectively communicate. A gun didn't help in any of those, the vast, vast majority of cases.
- bluntfang 6y agolike that one time a white woman called the cops on a black man in central park? I don't think doing an action to have the policed called on you is the best approach, considering it can be weaponized by dishonest actors.
- bigbubba 6y agoNobody in this discussion has presumed such a thing.
- ruined 6y agoIt's the explicit expressed fear in the root comment, and the basis of the police warrior ideology.
- bigbubba 6y agoThe root commenter has said explicitly of armed violent people: "the vast majority of patients are not like that" So to reiterate, nobody in this thread has presumed as bluntfang claims.
- joshuamorton 6y agoYet their claim is that we need to respond as though every mentally ill person is an imminent threat.
- bigbubba 6y agoTheir claim, as I've interpreted it, is that their lived experiences have lead them to believe any situation must be treated with caution because they never know what to expect. That is simply not the same as presuming that every mentally ill person is carrying a firearm and is violent. As I see it, that's just common sense. If you get a call from a woman telling you she's fallen down and is hurt, how likely is it that EMTs are met at the door by a drunk man who claims nothing is wrong? What first appeared to be a simple medical situation may actually be a case of domestic violence. Neither the dispatcher nor the EMT can know this before anybody arrives on the scene, so whoever gets there first needs to be cognizant of all possibilities. Recognizing the possibility that somebody might be violent is not the same as believing they will be.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoIf the EMTs are being paid $12, is it any wonder dispatch is notorious for misevaluating situations? Deep structural problems.
- Natsu 6y agoI don't know what dispatch is paid, but EMTs are not dispatchers so this doesn't make much sense to me.
- bigbubba 6y agoI don't follow. Why should EMTs getting ripped off be a factor in dispatch being unable to do more than relay whatever inaccurate or incomplete information they might gave been able to extract from a member of the general public over the phone? If a woman dials 911, says "Help!" then hangs up, how is the dispatcher supposed to accurately convey the situation to an EMT? EMTs should be paid more, but paying EMTs more won't address this problem.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoSorry, yes, I can see how my comment could be confusing. I was implying that the call centre worker is probably less credentialed than the EMT. Yours in a strong point though: dispatch can only pass on what they know, so their misevaluation may not actually be the result of mistakes or a pack of training, and I probably shouldn't have read that meaning in to OPs words. Thank you.
- dkdk8283 6y agoParamedics have more training and are paid more. While $12 is pretty low it’s not the ceiling.