No word yet on what this was all about. But the shooter’s description is… useless. I hope they manage to have some video he was caught on, or he’ll never be caught.
Pulling a gun and a switchblade, while wielding baseball bats, on teenagers?
And supposedly this was in response to a BB gun being fired at a window - and I’m not seeing anything indicating that they had a reason to suspect these teens.
This is what is wrong with allowing Open Carry of baseball bats, and a lack of proper screening by baseball bat merchants.
That’s only slightly better than “Some dude”
“Did I intend to use the gun? Absolutely not, but I felt that was my only safeguard against being killed that night,” Leeser said, but then quickly reversed herself. “Worst-case scenario, yes, I would have used it. But I didn’t.”
I don’t see the reversal. She didn’t intend to use the gun, but if it went worst case she would have…
On the other hand, another case of playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes.
I’m really glad this guy had a gun.
Story is missing magic words for a 3 AM critter shooting gone wrong.
Alcohol may have been involved.
As well as the following:
Also identified were several other victims: common sense, respect for life, and a basic knowledge of zoology. Some of these victims were declared dead at the scene.
Hey now, it was probably messing with his wife’s garden, or his dawg.
I’m about ready to get an airsoft gun and start going after the squirrels in my yard myself. They keep dropping walnuts on the dog and me.
It’s in their job description.
And armadillos don’t attack dogs.
Hospitals:
So, according to Houston and Texas, if a person with mental health issues is in crisis, they can’t go to a hospital either. They can’t go to the police, they can’t go to the hospital. So much for the “if this is a medical emergency, call 911” messages on various agencies’ and organizations’ voicemail systems.
I can’t wait to see what SFPD does in response to this. Pop open a few bottles of champagne, probably.
Officers Ortega and Law were working extra jobs as security at St. Joseph Medical Center at the above address when they were summoned to the eighth floor to help nurses subdue a combative patient.
So I don’t know how to reconcile these two statements.
Personally, we stand in outrage for every time he is referred to as “combative” without sub-clause or context, we stand in outrage for every time he is called a “suspect” instead of a patient, we stand in outrage for every time he, one empty-handed, help-seeking man, is painted as a threat to two officers, able bodied and armed, in a hospital.
You called a security guard with a gun and a taser, what exactly did you expect them to do? It’s not like the cops were just roaming around looking for trouble. Why is this the cops fault? Isn’t the fault of the hospital for first not treating the patient and second calling for a hammer and then being shocked when they react to what they told them was a nail.
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That second quote is from the health care providers that started a petition, not from doctors and nurses at that particular hospital.
But this whole thing is bolloxed. I have no idea why they would be wearing guns and tasers in a hospital, while serving as security guards. Why would the hospital (including doctors and nurses) outright refuse to treat him for the problem he came in for?
If I went into a hospital because I had a broken leg, and the hospital told me to leave after checking me for the sprained elbow I got trying to get out of my car, I’d be pretty damn violent too.
Oh, oops. Mentally ill = insane = sub-human. I forgot.
Some concern that in a major metro area some criminal might be injured and be dangerous? Why wouldn’t they if they were building security? Seems to me whoever called for the response screwed up. Just like that dude that called 911 on the guy “waving” the M16 around that actually was using a toy gun as a cane and talking on the phone.
Seriously, can you imagine the mess if an active shooter showed up in a hospital, or even some dude grabbing a fire ax, except for the one time one did and the doctor had an unauthorized gun in his desk?
If I own a dog, and let go of the leash and it bites you I’m at fault. If I call 911 and say you have an explosive vest on and they shoot you I should be at fault. And the people who called building security for a combative patient should be at fault.
As for the security guards, I get a panicked call about some crazy guy busting shit up, I’m expecting the worst. I’m supposed to be the last person to call, since I have the least training on dealing with difficult patients. I doubt if the dudes race even registered on them.
Didn’t they just cover two or three times that they didn’t believe he was mentally ill? And therefore the police likely wouldn’t have known either?
And if he isn’t getting treated and was already discharged, what was he doing on the 8th floor anyway?
They were trying to get him to leave, even as his family was begging them to help him. That’s where the “combative” part comes in.
And they didn’t burst through the doors as if they were sure that he was a danger. They came in, argued with him and pushed him around, and then shot him.
No, I am not giving the “officers” a pass. And they should not be able to play the “public servant” card while moonlighting. Nobody knows that the security guard is a cop, so they can not claim that they were attacked because they were a cop. They were not attacked in the line of duty (we have yet to see any evidence of an attack at all), the attack did not prevent them from serving the public good.
We have that crap happening here too. I see off-duty officers guarding the front doors of banks. One of the mental health clinics, the one everybody is sent to if they can’t get their medication, has a couple working in shifts. Some of the guards at the Human Services office are off-duty police officers. Except here, they are allowed to wear their uniforms while moonlighting! And every one of them has that hot-dog jet-fighter cowboy attitude down pat. At the Human Services office they usually make things worse because they don’t bother finding out what is really going on.
I’d rather deal with the Feds. At the Social Security office, the wait is shorter and the guards don’t grab their guns every time somebody sneezes.
I didn’t see that in the article you linked.
Seems to me that this is a policy failure. The wrong people were called to handle the incident. The policy is either wrong, or someone didn’t follow it. Considering this sort of thing isn’t unusual in a hospital I’d guess the charge nurse or whoever was in charge of the patient was the stupid one.
Don’t see much of that here, but you don’t need a signature from God to carry a handgun either. Most officers moonlight as neighborhood security, usually covering around the same beat as they do on duty and they are in uniform and half the time in cruisers.
I think you stop a lot of this shit if you remove the immunity police have while performing their duties. If you could go to jail for a bad shoot it might make a difference who they unload on.
There’s a fair argument to be made for letting officers wear uniforms and drive their cruisers as much as possible, especially in smaller municipalities, since this gives the appearance and deterrence of greater police coverage than a budget can really afford.
People talk about the police acting like they’re in a war zone, but it’s really like people imagine war zones to be. I used to joke that I wouldn’t be able to do law enforcement because of the restrictive rules of engagement, but really it’s often the other way around. If they were employing counterinsurgency doctrine (which is only middling useful for counterinsurgency, but that’s a separate issue), they’d be working a lot harder to “win the hearts and minds” than they do in many jurisdictions here.
When your police can execute a SWAT-style no-knock warrant for a drug charge more easily than your military can when looking for actual illegal combatants who have killed people in a war zone, you have a problem.
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This. It burns my brisket when they do this and they know the guy has a job and or is going to be at X place at Y time. Do you really need a no knock warrant for someone suspected of possession?
One of my issues with the War on Some Drugs is the way it turned the police from “protect and serve” to urban assault teams.
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And real estate agents, car salesmen, and pawn brokers.
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Well yeah, because instead of Barney Fife and Andy you have an entire SWAT team to feed on a small town budget.
Society used to handle drug addicts by just letting them waste away and die, with different levels of care. Once we decided drug addiction was a disease then we had to do something. I’m not sure what things look like if FDR hadn’t started cracking down on drugs.
Finally, this whole meme is being challenged. Well, okay, it was challenged before, by several studies, but most people never heard of these studies, apparently.
A friend posted that to his FB page. I had to question the logic of such a comparison, because, really, there is so little in common between those two countries.