My son is a police officer and he doesn’t like dealing with the mentally ill because they are so unpredictable and most are frequent flyers so the officers know them but mental illness and if they have taken drugs makes the whole contact dangerous.
A year ago in his department they got a call of a man with a gun running around in the road screaming and threatening people. Three officers responded and they immediately knew who this person was, had arrested him many times and he had never been violent or dangerous. They knew he had a mental illness and would use drugs at times. He was a nuisance and a petty thief but never was a danger to his neighborhood and never known to carry a weapon in multiple arrests.
They rolled up, saw him and called him by name told him to put the gun down and took cover. The suspect was wild out of his head and the officers time and again ordered him to drop the gun. One officer was too his left and the suspect raised his gun and aimed at the officer and another officer fired one round into the suspect. They got to him, cleared the gun and began medical efforts and called an ambulance but he died at the scene.
Turns out the guy had got a bad batch of drugs and was out of his mind. This was the proverbial Otis of the town with mental issues but the drugs sent him over the edge. Half the neighborhood blamed the officer and the other half who saw it blamed the suspect. The officer took months off with PTSD and still suffers from it. None of them wanted to shoot but events left them no choice regardless of the fact of whether the guy was mentally ill or not.
i appreciate police- and i don’t envy them their jobs.
I would not want to deal with a mentally ill person having an episode.
I am sure after doing it dozens if not hundreds of times, it gets old.
Even worse when you know that is what you’ll be dealing with in about 2 minutes.
The police officer made a flip remark regarding something she really does not want to deal with. IMHO.