Good luck with that. They will either pretend not to hear you as they walk away, or you will get a non-response of “Just wait right here”. That advice you just gave? The cops know all about it and how to circumvent it. Insist too hard, and you have become “combative”.
Good point, and that’s why you should always film your encounters with the police.
This is paywalled. Perhaps someone could post a gift link.
Delgardo Franklin II had been hearing voices in his head but refusing mental health treatment for weeks. So his father took matters into his own hands, calling Arlington police while his son sat at a bus stop on a summer day in 2019… As one officer pointed a Taser device at the younger Franklin, another ordered him to kneel so he could be handcuffed, video of the encounter obtained by The Washington Post shows. When Franklin refused, five officers circled him and moved in on cue, wrestling him to the ground… Police then jailed Franklin and charged him with assaulting three officers. All of it while his father stood by, watching in disbelief as police overpowered an unarmed man he told them was in mental distress… Franklin’s mental health deteriorated after the encounter, his father said. He was prosecuted for a year and a half, even after a Virginia judge found him incompetent to stand trial. Another judge found that his competence had been restored months later, but the charges were ultimately dropped in May 2021, after the case was docketed for hearings 17 times.
The bottom line is that you NEVER call the police to deal with somebody having a mental health crisis.
I really hope this was just an unfortunate accident. I’m picturing the cop spotting the address as the one with the car parked out front and, not knowing the woman was laying in the road just beyond the parked car, runs over her as they’re turning into the driveway…or something like that.
My fear is that it’s going to be something stupid like they were texting or otherwise not paying enough attention to notice a woman laying in the middle of the road in broad daylight when the dispatcher told them that they’d be looking for a woman walking around in the street. (<- made up example, I don’t know any more than what the article says)
Found guilty of a misdemeanor?? Was it littering the train track with his car and that woman?
Reckless endangerment and assault. The charge she was acquitted of was intent to commit manslaughter. It doesn’t sound like the case supported that last charge.
I would have thought that leaving someone locked up on train tracks would be worse than a misdemeanor. Who does that? The cop also endangered the train.
Then it’s up to the prosecutor to find a felony charge that can be supported by the facts of the case. It appears that the officer was stupid and reckless, but not malicious. There is another officer still to be tried so there may be more supported felony charges in that case.
Maybe that’s the officer who left the car on the tracks. Another idiot. Hopefully, both are fired.
Exactly. Anyone who thinks that calling someone whose only tools are weapons to deal with someone in a mental health crises is an idiot. “I was afraid he’d hurt himself so I called for a guy with a gun to come help” said no intelligent person ever.
Which is fucked. Because manslaughter itself is admitting the death was accidental.
I heard of an Amtrak run that was delayed for over an hour because it hit a shopping cart and they had to look for a person that might have been with it. Trains hitting things do not just go along on their way.
The alternative is that it was on purpose, which is entirely possible. But the prosecution would have to demonstrate that the officer intended have the car struck by a train in order to kill or injure the victim. I suspect that would be rather hard to prove in this instance unless there’s evidence that I’m not aware of.
And that would be murder under any regular reading of the law.
Manslaughter, under Colorado law, is recklessly causing the death of another person. Recklessly is acting in a manner that involves substantial and unjustifiable risk of death, knowing that action carries substantial risk, and doing it anyway. Locking someone in a police cruiser parked on the train tracks fits every part of that definition.
The officer committed manslaughter, and the jury let them off the hook. That’s why it’s fucked.
But then they would be inconvenienced by having to move 2 towns over to continue their law work!
We’ve been subject to decades of “Call 911 in an emergency.” So of course we tend to call 911 in any emergency whether it’s a crime in progress, a fire, heart attack, or someone having some sort of mental health crisis. When my father had a heart attack, I called 911 and a police officer arrived shortly after the paramedics did.
The question I always ask myself before calling 911 is “Will introducing a heavily armed high school dropout with a pathological need to assert his authority into this situation be a good thing, or a bad thing?” Because when you call 911,that’s what you’re going to get.