[dd5339]

Good God! Why in the h*ll did'nt someone just walk over and take the vase away?

Semper Fi

[phasma proeliator]

The city better go buy a nice jar of vaseline - cause they're gonna have to bend over on this one.

[Spruce]

Un-Friggin-Believable! Talk about some cops hopped-up on testosterone. What a bunch of pu**ies.

[Militiaman7]

The question is, did the SWAT TEAM have their Vase-proof vests on?

[Snowy]

Give the cops a break. The man was obviously being e-vase-ive.

[Minnesoootan]

"It was the safest option for the patients and the man," said police spokesman Jack Gillen. "If this were my parent, I would be satisfied with the officers' actions."

WTF? if my ole man heard me say that pepper spray and bean bags were justified.....

[TomServo]

"If this were my parent, I would be satisfied with the officers' actions."

"I don't know if they even needed to call police. I wish they had called me first."

Hmmm...looks like the daughter disagrees. I suggest we line up the spokesmans parents against the wall and allow the daughter to load up with some bean bags..

[GeoPie]

Hey, I used to work for a hospital on the mental health units. One of the patients we had was suffering from dementia. He was 83 years old and used a walker.

He was an ex boxer and a farmer. We found out cause he clocked one staff member and broke his jaw. The staff members face swelled up like a ballon. Badest punch I ever saw. This guy was truly a bad ass. It would take 6 of us to restrain the guy when he went off, and it was one of the toughest take downs we had to do. Don't let those old guys fool ya ;-)

[Cachelot]

"Quick! Shoot the guy before he drops the vase!"

[LibKill]

Excessive. Even if the guy had arms like Swarzenager, he could have been netted pretty easily in that wheelchair.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

If this was Houston they would have rounded up and arrested all of the residents of the nursing home.

[hoosierskypilot]

Dang straight! Shoot'em three times and then yell, "Halt. Halt. Halt."

[justanotherfreeper]

I worked my way through college being a nurses' aide in a nursing home, and have a mother in law with Alzheimers, and I'd have to know a whole lot more about this before I came down on the police.

81 with a pacemaker doesn't mean he's frail -- he could be a strapping 6'5" and if he was active his whole life still stronger than some 5'3" nurses' aide. dd, if two people are struggling to get a glass away, and one is punching and biting, that glass is gonna break and both will get cut! And being in a wheelchair doesn't mean you can't land a good kick, (depending on why you are in a wheelchair)! In the moderate stages of Alzheimers (and other dementia's as well) patients can get VERY violent - biting, punching, kicking - when they are confused and frightened. If the aide isn't trained well, to be reassuring and calm, the aide can make things worse by yelling back or being abrupt.

That being said, I never, in the five years I worked in various nursing homes, heard of the police needing to be called in! Why wasn't his daughter called first? Did they move the other patients away from him and then isolate him and let him calm down? Or did they continue to scream at him, escalting the situation? Was he threatening other patients? I think there is a whole lot more to this story, but at first blush I blame the nursing home before the police. Nursing homes are supposed to be trained to deal with these kinds of situations, cops aren't.

[mhking]

"Oops, I made him drop the vase on his head - I'm sorry he died..."

[Jonathon Spectre]

To protect and serve... and maybe shoot an old person.

[Spruce]

To prevent this from happening again all vases must be outlawed.
For the children.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Police said they shot an 81-year-old nursing home resident three times with bean bags and hit him with pepper spray when he became suicidal and brandished a small glass vase.

"We had to kill him in order to save him."

[tracer]

Was the vase half-full or half-empty?

[tracer]

This situation never would have gotten out of hand if someone had thought to call the Vase Squad.....

[lowbridge]

Florida police fire beanbags at 81-year-old nursing home resident who brandished vase

Never bring beanbags to a vase fight.