A public execution by American police.

[fallstuff]

The dude sadly was having a mental episode.

 

[gambit]

I would like to see a country whose police do not care to see your hands when they talk to you. Simple request.

 

[jhungary]

as a former cop, you don’t like to see this types of incidents, but it occurs because the job is stressful, especially in this types of situations. The Police had no choice to militarized given how the US society has progressively become so due to the wars overseas, the media, and certain groups with high percentage of violent crimes. I was a city cop in one of those cities (northeastern corridor).
I called it quits right after the academy because I was dealing with a large minority community and the first arrest I made, I had crowds of them from a circle and start recording me. This was 10 years ago, right before the race riots began and police behavior was caught on tape. I made a smart choice to leave that line of work because one mistake, and your PC loving superiority will leave you out to dry in the same prison as the one where you probably put people there. It’s a harsh life.

This has nothing to do with militarise police.

In fact, as a LEO instructor for 5 years (1 year in Kansas, 4 in NSW Australia) and have decade of policing experience under my belt I can tell you even in Gun-less Australia, where policing is nothing more than customer service (Yes, you literally need to go thru course designed for retail if you want to be a cop here in Australia). This is going to be the same result here in oz if you do what Eastep did here. I know, because I teach cops here in the last 4 years.

In fact, as a LEO trainer, I can tell you these cops did almost everything by the books, there were a long period of de-escalation, the guy who talked to Eastep were passionate and calm, the cops keep their distant, and didn't really appraoch in an aggressive manner, really if I am the head of that UoF investigation, I would say the only thing these cop should have done and did not was to employ non/less lethal option, maybe they did? I don't know. Everything else is conforming with De-escalation policing. To do it better, you will probably need Psych personnel on scene, which is a type of resource they may or may not have at that moment.

The issue here is US don't have a well define policy on mental illness case, if this happens today, most mental illness case are better handled by Paramedic than Police in most case, the problem is, you have to have the site secure and contain before you can send in the Paramedic or any type of medical professional, assuming the cops here didn't just pull him over and he did that and get shot, Cops were on a code when the situation had developed like that.