This is a term that shouldn't even exist, yet here we are as cops murdering people has become so normalized.
I've been watching Live PD, which has several "suicide by cop" incidents. Most of the time, the preparator is someone with obvious mental health problems (with their family members often telling police this and begging them not to kill them). Many of these incidents are also domestic disputes that have escalated with cops called to the scene to quote on quote "de-escalate" the situation by coming out waving guns around and threatening to shoot.
This is what happens when you cut budgets for mental health and social workers. Police have replaced jobs that they would normally have in situations like this and the result of some fucked up term like "suicide by cop" coming into play.
What they are really doing is saying it's 100% A-OK for cops to murder people like this and it is the dehumanization of people with mental health concerns and the casual victims of police.
On Live PD, all they ever do is vocally defend this and make it a point to blame the victim. "They obviously were suicidal, begging to die and wanted to go out with suicide by cop".
Swatting should still get you a more serious charge, because with the state of police today there's a good chance it'll get someone killed. That's worth something more than a false report.
Letting swatters off easy isn't going to do anything to stop police violence.
Yeah, attempted murder is probably strong for some situations, especially if it's some 13-year-old pwer gmer who doesn't exactly appreciate the gravity of what they're doing. And you do bring up a good point that discussions about swatting can take for granted how barbaric our police are.
fuck wellness checks. we need wellness checks to be done by trained mental health professionals, not cops. i will never call a wellness check on anybody because of how traumatizing that shit is.
like i've had wellness checks called on me (due to me being suicidal), and i was able to convince them that i was just "stressed due to classes", but that shit still is terrifying... like wellness checks are honestly a great way to convince someone to not talk to anyone (friends, hotlines, etc.) when they're suicidal, because they just make everything worse.
I thought of this too with wellness checks. Where I live, there have been multiple incidents of cops murdering people during wellness checks. One happened literally an hour from where I live a few years ago.
This is what I meant about cops replacing jobs that originally went to social workers and mental health professionals. Across the country, several states and major cities will cut funding and budgets for social programs and instead boast the police departments' budgets.
I live out in the rural country and they even did that out here. The county officials used the excuse of a drug epidemic (meth out here) as a way to slash the budget for emergency services and school funding and instead bloated the police's budget in a "tough on crime" effort. The result has been a heavy increase in murders by police.
yes, and as you said, it's somehow considered less of a murder because it's "suicide by cop".
our entire system of dealing with mental health issues is fucking tragic. like if you're hospitalized due to mental health issues, good luck because you'll be stuck with a several-thousand dollar bill (and that's on insurance), i guess you have to hope that you don't feel more suicidal over that debt! like how the fuck are mentally ill people supposed to get help in this fucking country when everyone tells us to go to therapy, but therapy's inaccessible to the populations who most need it due its price, and psychiatry is more inaccessible due to the price of sessions and the price of drugs.
the united states doesn't care about mentally ill people, but they pretend that they do by choosing to make the national suicide hotline a 3-digit phone number, and libs fucking fall for it.
My friend got baker acted and due to that they had to drop out of highschool because it would be impossible to catch up and graduate. You're suicidal? Now you're suicidal and a dropout, bucko
my heart goes out to your friend... fuck involuntary hospitalization. it causes more problems than it helps (if you're lucky and it helps at all).
but yea, it's like, "spend a few days in the psych ward and come out without a job and in hella debt and worse off than before but like now at least you won't seek help in the future when you're feeling suicidal"
As someone who suffers from mental health problems and has a history with it, I 100% agree with you. They dehumanize anyone with mental health problems as "weak" and you are made to feel utterly worthless.
One of the most annoying parts about the gun control debate is how much libs focus on "people with mental health problems", rather than them confronting the reality that America has an individualist culture that has been pushing a right wing narrative and mythology about "the good guy with the gun" and the fact that a lot of recent mass shooters are far right extremists. Instead, they blame all of it on mental health and try to claim that these recent far right mass shooters had mental health problems instead of looking at the reality that they knew exactly what they were doing and have bought into an ideology that pushes them to go on violent rampages.
When you have a medical history and diagnosis of mental health concerns, it also becomes difficult to get a job which just makes the depression worse. Often times, it's undiagnosed in our society cause we are made to hide all of our problems in fear that we'll be seen as weak and worthless.
yes i agree, like whenever a mass shooting happens, they blame mental illness, yet they do nothing to fix or even ameliorate our fucked up mental healthcare system. it serves to stigmatize the mentally ill whilst avoiding setting any blame on far-right extremism.
and i definitely relate to having issues with having jobs (plus keeping on track of my uni courses)... i am fortunate to be diagnosed and to receive mental healthcare, but i cannot disclose that to my jobs, and i struggle with the idea of disclosing my struggles to my professors. additionally, at my university, they require a letter from a mental health professional for accommodations (and when i asked for accommodations, i only had a GP who could attest to my mental illnesses which affect me as a student, but the disability office told me that that wouldn't be enough).
The great thing is the people justifying it by pointing out that the person was suicidal would absolutely lay a guilt trip on anyone they knew that told them they were suicidal. It's basically like every encounter with a cop is a potential euthanizing and it doesn't phase them.
If you browse r/UnresolvedMysteries and other true crime sub reddits where police murders are discussed, you'll see both libs and chuds using the term often as a way to defend the cops.
It will be back, you can count on it. I recorded several episodes earlier this year and am just now getting around to clearing my DVR.
I mean, this is like a real phenomenon too. Like people will get the cops called and brandish a weapon in the hopes of ending it.
I think we should have euthanasia centers and real conversations about "right to die" as people get stuck with terminal diagnoses, watch their lives, families, and careers upend, get locked into permadebt, etc.
