I think also time frame is important. I have been in LE for many many years...i have been in the same position as these cops...i hate it. Mental health is one huge grey area. These people have rights as well...and we have to balance those against public safety. Based on the backlash I see from this incident...cops are going to be expected to see the future...and peoples rights will be diminished. My 2 cents
I think better than having regular LE officers put on the spot in such situations would be having access to a professional to review the concern-causing evidence and also be present to speak with the subject.
A nice little chat instead of bothering to check any evidence surrounding someone who has been under life-long psychological care, has started posting murderous videos, and has family and friends vouching for concern just doesn’t cut it IMO.
I’m in a town of about 150,000. Check The Well Being calls, mostly suicide related, average about 25 a day. The average officer’s pretty skilled at sizing people up, but it’s more about perception and less about precognition. To hand law enforcement the authority to lock up people based on some third party’s belief that they might be a danger at some future date is an invitation for abuse from a variety of different parties.
As usual, the politicians are already proposing law changes to “fix” this situation, but policy based on wishful or magical thinking instead of a clear understanding of the facts invariably causes more trouble than it solves.
We had an OIS involving a kid who was terrorizing his family with a butcher knife. Several efforts with less than lethal force hadn’t worked, and he’d retreated to a closet. While officers were trying to talk him down, he burst out, knife raised, and got within about a foot of one officer when his partner shot him. The family then created a major uproar, announcing that the police “should have known” that he was going to do that and should have backed off and called the psych team. (They had some fantasy that the psych team would have magically made everything okay, I guess)
Well, our “city fathers” directed the department to change policy along those lines.
A month later, a kid was waving around a gun at his family, officers evacuated the family, then (per the new policy) backed off and waited for the psych team. While they waited, the kid shot himself. And, of course, the family sued, claiming that they “should have known” that if they didn’t disarm the kid he’d kill himself.
In both instances, the media was right there, second guessing along every step of the way.
Stuff like that annoys me.