Parents called for mental health help. Police arrived and fatally shot their son.
Less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door, police shot Yong Yang in his parents’ Koreatown home while he was holding a knife during a bipolar episode.
Parents in Los Angeles’ Koreatown called for mental health help in the middle of their son’s bipolar episode this month. Clinical personnel showed up — and so did police shortly after.
Police fatally shot Yong Yang, 40, who had a knife in his hand, less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door to his parents’ apartment where he had locked himself in, newly released bodycam video shows.
Now the parents of Yang, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder around 15 years ago, have told NBC News exclusively that they are disputing part of the account captured on bodycam, in which police recount a clinician’s saying Yang was violent before the shooting on May 2.
I honestly don't know what the hell you're supposed to do in America if a loved one has a psychotic episode and threatens you, because calling the cops for help could be a death sentence for them, but not getting help could be a death sentence for you. Maybe make some sort of plan with neighbors in case something happens? But then you get the neighbors all worried that they're living next to someone who could get dangerously psychotic. I'm not talking about what should be done if things were more ideal, I'm talking about what people with such loved ones should do if it happens today, May 22, 2024. Because it sounds like someone has a good chance of dying no matter what.
You just have to fucking deal with it yourself basically, our social safety net is a bad joke. If you're a minority, neurodivergent, queer, or anything else they decide they don't like, you have a much higher likelihood of literally being murdered by the people who are supposed to help and protect society.
I have a family member who had a wellness check called in for her and the cops came in and immediately beat her ass. Don't let these fuckers into your house. Ever.
Never call a wellness check on someone if you aren't cool with them being killed.
Wellness checks are notorious for being lethal, it's absurd.
It sounds like what it is, Flying. Not a tasty pill to swallow but these are the dues of the division modern society has allowed.
No more Village raising the children. No more respected elders, trusted craft people, or neighborly bonds.
For the illusion of connection and its subsequent gamification and for the enrichment of those who say what we want to hear, these are the dues to be paid.
We live and die alone, bemoaning a loss of bonds that could be mended at any time; let he who is lonely lay their cynicism down first.
No, I don't believe it's that easy (and recognize the risks of being first) but it probably is that simple. No clue how the message is amplified back through time in a manner that gets enough likes though.
Such an insightful comment. /Gen
Sometimes, others share their opinions and lived-in experience not to give you insight, but because to speak is to human. Sonder on that, whatever your generation.
I am aware the oldest writing is of a merchant swindling. I am aware of the atrocities respected elders have carried out against the Village children, all villages.
I am not here to insight you; use your own faculties for that.
You are an arrogant fool. Blah blah blah. BTW the oldest written text is probably the Code of Ur-Nammu. It's not the Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir, as I assume you're comment referred to.
I was being genuine. That's what "/gen" means.
I am genuinely sorry I was genuinely a reactionary idiot earlier, but thank you for teaching me a new one!
We had to ride out a number of suicidal episodes and drug overdoses over COVID. I have PTSD from childhood abuse that flared up during the lockdown and PTSD from previous encounters with the police (I was tased and arrested during a welfare check about a decade ago).
Thankfully my gf is good at holding space but it was still very stressful for both of us. And there were a number of times I would have gone to the hospital if I had any faith in the system.
You've got to get really fucking friendly with the cops and you've just gotta hope. You want to take your child to the local precinct office and introduce them and their disability to officers in a calm setting and discuss how to deesclate situations... especially if you can talk clearly on certain trigger scenarios and double especially if your child can voice these things himself. Then you've got to hope they create a file on your child and hope they fucking remember this shit if your child goes off.
Written by the step parent to a child with bipolar disorder and autism - though we're in Canada things are extremely similar wrt policing culture up here.
This might work in a smaller town, but this family was in LA. I've never lived there, but I have lived in NYC and I doubt anyone in the precinct would care. They would just file some paperwork and move on to the next thing. There's probably less than a 50/50 shot that the paperwork would be communicated to any officer in a crisis. And back when I lived there in the stone age, that chance would have been zero.
Maybe if your precinct does community policing, it would be beneficial to introduce yourself to any officers you know are local, but that assignment can change on a whim.
Big cities are composed of smaller divisions covered by local precincts - there's still luck involved here but you're really misunderstanding how policing works.
they asked me and others to leave the house when i called (active suicidality and psychosis). i told them we would not, that i was sitting next to him on the floor and two minors were in their rooms nearby. i hoped they would be less likely to do something stupid when they knew there were three other people here and one actively witnessing and close to him.
i think it ensured they were more thoughtful entering my home, and he was calmer when they entered because i remained.
fortunately, i had calmed him enough and taken the weapon that this was even a possibility. i suspect it doesn't hurt that we're white.
Some places have mobile response teams for mental health issues. Florida has a few programs being piloted right now. They have direct numbers. So, the police are not necessarily involved in reported events.
And that's great, but mentally ill people are everywhere, not just in the places in Florida with pilot programs. There are many ideas with how to deal with this problem in the future. Meanwhile, cops are killing mentally ill people today.
I'm not disagreeing. My comment was solution focused. Some areas have teams set up to help. Not everyone knows about them or even to look for them. So, I was providing information that might lead people to look around for programs that might help.
I mean if you need help, you can always ask a neighbour for help. Would be useful if everyone had a mancatcher pole as well, as messed up as the implications of everyone in society having a mancatcher is.
I can't speak for anyone else, and I am not in this situation myself, thankfully, but I wouldn't know my neighbors well enough to ask them, sad as that is.
I'm in no better spot, but this is the crux of the problem, isn't it - too many of us don't have a strongly-enough bound local community to get assistance with stuff like this without involving the cops.