I honestly don’t know what the hell you’re supposed to do in America if a loved one has a psychotic episode and threatens you, because calling the cops for help could be a death sentence for them, but not getting help could be a death sentence for you. Maybe make some sort of plan with neighbors in case something happens? But then you get the neighbors all worried that they’re living next to someone who could get dangerously psychotic. I’m not talking about what should be done if things were more ideal, I’m talking about what people with such loved ones should do if it happens today, May 22, 2024. Because it sounds like someone has a good chance of dying no matter what.

Honestly, everyone sucks in this situation…

• The parents pretty much ignored the warning signs of his illness, schizophrenia and bi-polarism, for far too long. It was revealed in the body cam footage that this incident actually started the night prior when their son showed up and forced his parents out of the apartment, probably being violent to them as well, and they had to sleep in their car.

I’ve seen this numerous times where the parents or family members know at heart the person needs to be committed, but for various reasons mostly due to finances or not wanting to stifle their freedom, they prolong the decision until its practically too late… and here’s how you know:

• The parents slept in their car over night hoping his “episode” would end and when it didn’t they were forced to escalate and called an out-patient mental health facility to get him to a hospital; if they were handling his care properly, he wouldn’t have been out. This reeks of them doing this “wait it out…” before and it worked, but not this time…

Out-patient mental health or rehabilitation nurses, etc are not equipped to handle a violent patient. In fact, their training is as was shown in the bodycam footage. The second a patient becomes violent or too much to handle, they are trained to call the police.

From a morbid perspective, Police at least have a union and pension clauses that help take care of their families if they die in the line of duty, but home nurses, hospice care workers, rehab nurses, mental rehab nurses, etc do not (besides the possible work life insurance)

• The only area where I think the father and out-patient made things worse was they weren’t able to properly communicate the level of violence to prepare the cops. They were asked multiple times if he had a weapon, if the apartment had weapons, if he had threatened anyone, etc and the answers were all “no, but sorta” vague like.

They were almost too afraid to admit how violent or a threat the individual was because they didn’t want him to be injured… but at this point its too late.

Yes, and finally… it was too late without someone getting hurt. The individual was barricaded in an apartment, had a knife, and was mentally unstable. The cops asked peacefully several times for him to come out, but he wouldn’t; there’s no world where this ended in someone not getting hurt.

• I think the police actually screwed up the most when they attempted to enter without the Ambulance being on-site. They had a ‘contained’ situation, the individual wasn’t going anywhere and didn’t want to leave, so let him be until the ambulance shows up. They said multiple times they would wait for RA, but in the end… they didn’t.

Everyone sucked… except Yong Yang

I mean, every criticism you level at the parents sounds like people worried that if they call police its going to go badly.

I have a severely autistic son. There is literally no circumstance where I would call the police for any event involving him. Unless there is a dead body on the floor, they are not getting a call.

I’m in a weird dichotomy where I need to be sure he knows to trust police in case somehow he’s alone and needs help one day, while at the same time realizing that if he gets to that point he’s probably fucked, and praying there is never, ever a time where he interacts with police without my wife or I between him and them. I can’t say “look for a fireman” or “look for an ambulance” because there isn’t always one of them around. But you never have to wait too long to see a cop.

Hopefully if that ever happens, he’ll stumble across one of the less trigger-happy ones.

I have a severely autistic son. There is literally no circumstance where I would call the police for any event involving him. Unless there is a dead body on the floor, they are not getting a call.

Here’s a hypothetical for you, if your son had an episode and took someone hostage with a knife, you wouldn’t call the police?

I will always advocate that a big area where police could improve their standing with the communities they serve is to always strive toward better, non-lethal handling of situations where the circumstances are appropriate; however, handling individuals with behavioral / mental disabilities isn’t simple…

Getting back to the hypothetical, you don’t you think you have a duty to protect that hostage’s life at all costs? You wouldn’t call the police until that hostage was dead on the floor?

Hypothetically, for your sake, your son’s, and that hostage… I hope you aren’t serious or would reconsider…

I will always advocate that a big area where police could improve their standing with the communities they serve is to always strive toward better, non-lethal handling of situations where the circumstances are appropriate; however, handling individuals with behavioral / mental disabilities isn’t simple…

Nearly every single time I have seen someone make this particular excuse for police, a nurse or other staff from a healthcare facility will crop up to point out that they do it all day every day without having to kill people.

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.