Quote:
Originally Posted by wwkayaker
Well, I’m sure you can imagine the use of a mental health professional that doesn’t put them at risk. Asking a therapist to pull up a chair and sit beside the guy to talk him down seems a tad careless. Could a mental health worker be on site and speak to the person from a distance? Could a psychiatrist assess the situation and provide advice to the police? Why are those options unavailable but shooting the guy with rubber bullets is acceptable? Maybe they had a crisis worker on site but I doubt it since the police chief would have said so.
From what I see in the video, the Arwen shouldn’t have been used at that point. The result was a man dead and a police dog critically injured. Also, officers and bystanders now likely need counselling to deal with the traumatic event. Plenty of damage was done when it may have been avoided.
I don’t know the statistics on all of the police activities. I’m judging the actions of the CPS in this video and saying that I think it was unnecessary to use the device when they did. I think the police do a great job for the most part but they didn’t in this situation.
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I would suggest that the option of having a mental health professional "on site" would be difficult. How would you assess what is safe and what is not? Is 30 feet away safe? Is that an adequate position to offer therapy? I am not sure you can just ask someone holding a knife and stick and who has already assaulted people to hang tight till we get some resources in place.
I was arguing that this is EXACTLY the reason why police developed the Arwen program - to do everything they can to not use lethal force. This filled all the check boxes in my opinion - criminal offence, active assailant, holding weapons and non-communicative/responsive.