Elderly Warned: “For Your Own Safety, Do Not Call The Police”

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Elderly and mentally ill member of public warned not to call the police

Elderly citizens in the U.S. have been warned not to call the police for assistance unless they are prepared to risk a potentially violent or deadly assault by an officer. 

According to new statistics, citizens most likely to be tasered, shot or killed by cops include those suffering from autism, people who’s hearing is impaired, the mentally ill, the elderly, and the disabled.

Blacklistednews.com reports: Unfortunately, the risks just skyrocket when a disability is involved.

Nancy Schrock called 911 for help after her husband, Tom, who suffered with mental health issues, started stalking around the backyard, upending chairs and screaming about demons. Several times before, police had transported Tom to the hospital, where he was medicated and sent home after 72 hours. This time, Tom was tasered twice. He collapsed, lost consciousness and died.

The Schrocks are not alone in this experience.

INDEED, DISABLED INDIVIDUALS MAKE UP A THIRD TO HALF OF ALL PEOPLE KILLED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS.

THAT’S ACCORDING TO A STUDY BY THE RUDERMAN FAMILY FOUNDATION,  WHICH REPORTS THAT “DISABLED INDIVIDUALS MAKE UP THE MAJORITY OF THOSE KILLED IN USE-OF-FORCE CASES THAT ATTRACT WIDESPREAD ATTENTION. THIS IS TRUE BOTH FOR CASES DEEMED ILLEGAL OR AGAINST POLICY AND FOR THOSE IN WHICH OFFICERS ARE ULTIMATELY FULLY EXONERATED… MANY MORE DISABLED CIVILIANS EXPERIENCE NON-LETHAL VIOLENCE AND ABUSE AT THE HANDS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS.”

Trained to shoot first and ask questions later, police pose a risk to anyone with special needs whose disabilities may not be immediately apparent or require more finesse than the typical freeze-or-I’ll-shoot tactics employed by America’s police forces.

For example, in South Carolina, police tasered an 86-year-old grandfather reportedly in the early stages of dementia, while he was jogging backwards away from them. Now this happened after Albert Chatfield led police on a car chase, running red lights and turning randomly. However, at the point that police chose to shock the old man with electric charges, he was out of the car, on his feet, and outnumbered by police officers much younger than him.

In Oklahoma, police shot and killed a 35-year-old deaf man seen holding a two-foot metal pipe on his front porch (he used the pipe to fend off stray dogs while walking). Despite the fact that witnesses warned police that Magdiel Sanchez couldn’t hear—and thus comply—with their shouted orders to drop the pipe and get on the ground, police shot the man when he was about 15 feet away from them.

In Maryland, police (moonlighting as security guards) used extreme force to eject a 26-year-old man with Downs Syndrome and a low IQ from a movie theater after the man insisted on sitting through a second screening of a film. Autopsy results indicate that Ethan Saylor died of complications arising from asphyxiation, likely caused by a chokehold.

In Florida, police armed with assault rifles fired three shots at a 27-year-old nonverbal, autistic man who was sitting on the ground, playing with a toy truck. Police missed the autistic man and instead shot his behavioral therapist, Charles Kinsey, who had been trying to get him back to his group home. The therapist, bleeding from a gunshot wound, was then handcuffed and left lying face down on the ground for 20 minutes.

In Texas, police handcuffed, tasered and then used a baton to subdue a 7-year-old student who has severe ADHD and a mood disorder. With school counselors otherwise occupied, school officials called police and the child’s mother to assist after Yosio Lopez started banging his head on a wall. The police arrived first.

THESE CASES, AND THE HUNDREDS—IF NOT THOUSANDS—MORE THAT GO UNDOCUMENTED EVERY YEAR SPEAK TO A CRISIS IN POLICING WHEN IT COMES TO LAW ENFORCEMENT’S FAILURE TO ADEQUATELY ASSESS, DE-ESCALATE AND MANAGE ENCOUNTERS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS OR DISABLED INDIVIDUALS. 

While the research is relatively scant, what has been happening is telling.

Over the course of six months, police shot and killed someone who was in mental crisis every 36 hours.

Where does this leave us?

For starters, we need better police training across the board, but especially when it comes to de-escalation tactics and crisis intervention.

A study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that CIT (Crisis Intervention Team) –trained officers made fewer arrests, used less force, and connected more people with mental-health services than their non-trained peers.

Second, police need to learn how to slow confrontations down, instead of ramping up the tension (and the noise).

After Ethan Saylor’s death in Maryland, police recruits are now required to take a four-hour course in which they learn “de-escalation tactics” for dealing with disabled individuals: speak calmly, give space, be patient.

One officer in charge of the LAPD’s “mental response teams” suggests that instead of rushing to take someone into custody, police should try to slow things down and persuade the person to come with them.

Third, with all the questionable funds flowing to police departments these days, why not use some of those funds to establish what one disability-rights activist describes as “a 911-type number dedicated to handling mental-health emergencies, with community crisis-response teams at the ready rather than police officers.”

In the end, while we need to make encounters with police officers safer for people with disabilities, what we really need is to make encounters with police safer for citizens across the board, no matter how they’re packaged.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the problem is not that police officers are inherently bad—in fact, there are many good, caring officers in law enforcement—but when cops are trained to be military warriors instead of peace officers, we’re all viewed as potential threats.

10 Comments

      • Here in Australia even the hospitals are terrorising old people..there is something very very demonic happening in our hospitals… evil stuff …I have even heard from people in hospital that patients who are organ donors are being “let go” instead of being treated .. there is even suggestions heart attacks are being induced so other organs can be harvested ..

        • Great screen name. Same here, as far
          as I know; Agenda 21 depopulation. Abeldanger’s post;
          http://www.abeldanger.org/edmund-de-rothschild-world-wilderness/,

          based on George Hunt’s reporting on
          the 4th World Wilderness Conference in 1987 and the 1992 UNCED
          meeting, includes a recording of Edmund de Rothschild’s statement
          about reclaiming “the colonies”.

          http://www.abeldanger.org/edmund-de-rothschild-world-wilderness/

          In addition, in 1992, HW Bush
          officially replaced the Ten Commandments in US law with the
          Babylonian Talmud’s Noahide Law through a majority vote in Congress.
          This isn’t the old testament Noahide Law; it calls for the beheading
          of all non-Judaics; a step beyond the ultra-Orthodox elite pharisees’
          support for the Holocaust to eradicate the Jewish population that
          refused to acknowledge its authority above God and the Hebrew bible
          that Ha’aretz and Israel radio covered. Demonic? No other term
          applies. However, there’s no moral or ethical problem in the actions
          you mentioned, since rabbinical Judaism defines these people as
          non-human.

  1. It sounds like police departments need to do two things: give their officers a yearly psych review, and second do better at psyche testing when the officers are at the academy. I believe that some police departments have been intentionally hiring overly aggressive applicants who have little motivation for calm reasoning.

  2. There is no point in calling the hospital or the police or anybody else about the trouble your demons are causing you… There is only one person who can help you with your demonic problems and that is the man Jesus Christ……demons cant be medicated into submission.. or psyco analized into submission or any other form of so called treatment into submission…… Only Jesus Christ can deal with your demons.. wake up people.. there isn’t much time left

    • You are proof of just how fucking mindless and programmed most humans are…. you should be ashamed of yourself for your laziness in not doing your own research into truth… you are a typical example of being a tool of satan and therefore you shall. and fully deserve to join him in hell….. enough said…

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