A woman complains about how police treated her son:
“They don’t know if they are mentally ill or the things they go through. Evidently, if you see him running around in his shorts smoking dope behind a church, something is wrong with him, even if they do buck up. They should use something different than those Tasers. Tasers kill,” said the man’s mother.
Well, yes, it’s unfortunate the man died. I wonder if she could think of a way her son could avoid getting tasered, though?
Just saying “Don’t tase me, bro” doesn’t seem to be effective, but maybe not running around in his shorts behind a church smoking crack would be a better plan.
I would hazard a guess that one of the things that this unfortunate fella went through was being brought up by a mother without common sense.
You get one guess where junior got his brains from.
” ‘I lost my heart and soul. If I would’ve let him smoke crack in my house, he would still be alive, and I blame myself,’ said Leyva White, Keith White’s mother.”
Yeah, not letting him smoke crack was bad.
*
“If I would’ve let him smoke crack in my house, he would still be alive…”
Yeah, I guess that’s one solution.
Or… dare I offer a suggestion here… you could have maybe raised
the bar a little when you were bringing him up?
*
*
They should use something different than those Tasers. Tasers kill,” said the man’s mother.
I agree with the mother. I prefer batons.
Her “baby” was 44 years old and still living at home.She should be ashamed to claim him.
“If I would’ve let him smoke crack in my house, he would still be alive” “White started complaining of chest pains and was rushed to the hospital, where he died.”
“Cocaine is a powerfully addictive stimulant drug. The powdered, hydrochloride salt form of cocaine can be snorted or dissolved in water and injected. Crack is cocaine that has not been neutralized by an acid to make the hydrochloride salt. This form of cocaine comes in a rock crystal that can be heated and its vapors smoked. The term “crack” refers to the crackling sound heard when it is heated.*
Regardless of how cocaine is used or how frequently, a user can experience acute cardiovascular or cerebrovascular emergencies, such as a heart attack or stroke, which could result in sudden death. Cocaine-related deaths are often a result of cardiac arrest or seizure followed by respiratory arrest.”
Yeah but tazers kill!LOL!
It just occurred to me..someone on crack is running at Redline and the they get jump started with a Taser. Pop goes the Weasel.
“Her “baby” was 44 years old and still living at home.She should be ashamed to claim him.”
If I have a mentally ill son, I’ll claim him until the day he or I die. And I won’t be ashamed to do so.
But, I’ll also count each day he is alive as borrowed time.
For someone suffering from cancer for whom treatment is not a cure, we talk about it being a ‘blessing’ when they die. But when someone has mental illness (addiction, bi-polar) it is seen as a failure when they die. As far as I’m concerned, if he tried treatment for addiction and it failed, then it his disease was as terminal as cancer and the focus for the mother is to accept that her ‘baby’ is now at peace.
hahahaHAHAHAHA…*
oh. Was I not supposed to laugh at that?
That woman can try her hand at taking down a guy high on PCP, without tasers it would be one hell of a bloody mess. With alot more people then just the user a little hurt.
Maybe just a wee bit off topic, but CanadianKate, any form addiction is NOT a disease. It is simply called that so people in the U.S. can be covered by insurance. One has a conscious choice to light up, hoist a bottle, or jam a needle into one’s arm. It may be difficult not to but is still a choice. Cancer on the other hand or any host of diseases happen in spite or our precautions.
I do agree with most of the other comments that mom should have raised the bar up a few notches from the basement. To strive for mediocrity and fail is just, well failure.
Police brutality, torture, excess force, incivility and militarism is on the rise…this guy was an easy arrest for any cop with sand…he was unarmed , there were no hostages and the only persin at rist was the suspect.
I’d like to “taze” one of the gutless steroid raging goons who killed this goof….maybe they’d have some empathy.
Police are far to militant in tactics and attitude these days…most deserve to be on a battlefield, not on a civilian beat.
A thug in a uniform is still a thug.
Step one is to not engage in activities that provoke an enforcement of law
Step two is not to engage in a confrontation with law enforcement officers.
I always chuckle when people blame the police (although in rare instances it is understandable) and pretend to understand the job. “Easy arrest”, “gutless steroid raging goons”, “only person at risk”..comments such as those, without any sort of basis, are simply the “hug a thug” mentality and are based on zero education of the duties and responsibility of policing.
Anybody who understands the job knows full well the police are not expected to go hand-hand with a fighting suspect as generally the odds of injury to both police and the individual are higher.
The use of a taser is to ensure the least amount of force is applied to complete the arrest. The fact that this guy died has more to do with being revved up on drugs than the use of a taser that is meant to inflict the least amount of damage. Perhaps some would have prefered the police lob wet sponges in order to get this guy to stop fighting and comply.
Murder suspect ‘young kid’ Oct 2/07 Calgary Sun article.
“Lawyer says 19-year-old charged in pickaxe attack not coping well behind bars” and “He’s scared to death, not surprisingly”.
Talk about screwed up values. This 19 year old, who just cut short another young man’s achievements forever, is ‘scared in jail’?
Wait, who are we suppose to feel remorse for – the perpetrator or the victim?
I’m missing something here
This screwed-up individual appears to be (in this instance) a threat to no one but himself. There were plenty of options short of violence open to the police (such as ordering him home and going after criminals with non-consenting victims). Whether he was tazed or shot to death, excessive force is obvious.
“Whether he was tazed or shot to death, excessive force is obvious.”
And you know this because of your amazing powers of observation? Your insight into police tatics? Perhaps you were there as a witness? Or perhaps you dislike the police regardless of the facts. Hmm? Enlighten us!
“going after criminals with non-consenting victims” So if you consent to buy seventy tons of “weed” that I willingly consent to sell you, no harm no foul? Your logic fails me John Chittick
Anon
I was speaking of the events shown on the news clip (perhaps he wasn’t just begging not to be tazed off-camera) but regardless, if it weren’t for the noose of the welfare state buffering and subsidizing consequences for poor decisions, I would wholeheartedly advocate for the elimination of all victimless crimes such as dope sales and consumption involving consenting adults. Poor decisions and irresponsibility are not my concern unless other parties are victimized (taxed, threatened, coerced, hurt, stolen from, etc).
Any society that doesn’t allow one the right to make poor decisions and live with the resulting consequences has got to have: a large and full prison system or morgue, huge bureaucracy, police state, unsustainable welfare, or a citizenry of automatrons.
To suggest that drugs bought and consumed by consenting adults is a victimless crime is ludicrous.
Living in this age of seeming autonomy, John Chittick seems to be unaware that “no man is an island unto himself . . . ” (John Donne. John, he’s a famous poet. Google the poem.)
Because our lives are interconnected, the harm that drugs do to society as a whole is catastrophic. And, John, we all pay.
Lookout
I conditionally prefaced my support for eliminating victimless crimes on the elimination of the welfare state which has done far more damage to society than drugs. It is the welfare state which softens, subsidizes and transfers consequences for irresponsible decisions such as abusive drug use. The so-called “War on Drugs” greatly amplifies and distributes wider societal costs. Those things you refer to as being “interconnected” are precisely the above consequences of the welfare / nanny / police state.
You won’t see adult societal behavior within a schoolyard (welfare state).
The “drug” problem will only worsen within the welfare state but I believe that it would be irresponsible to legalize it within the welfare state. First step is to work on getting rid of the welfare state.
Instead of stating victimless crimes as ludicrous and citing poetry, try reading a little Milton Friedman.
John, I would be tempted to agree with you, except for one thing. Crack addicts get their money from many places, usually from breaking and entering, mugging, prostitution, car theft, car jacking and a variety of other crimes including murder. Welfare provides but a small source for an addicts income and most hardcore addicts cannot keep a job. I have known several addicts in my life. One stole from our union, one prostituted herself, another murdered an elderly couple in their home. I could name names but I do not think that would be appropriate in at least in two of the above cases. There are always victims and more often then not they are not addicts. So shall we agree to disagree?
“I sleep peacefully at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on my behalf” — George Orwell. Having worked in law enforcement, I know that police cannot simply turn a blind eye to criminality or disorderly conduct and expect to maintain order in a community — vis Caledonia. It’s unreasonable to expect them to be able to foresee rare events arising from the arrest of a suspect, and equally unreasonable to expect them to put themselves at undue risk in making the arrest, after all, they have to do this night after night and themselves have spouses and children to look after. The police take enough risk. So unless the facts show reason to believe otherwise, the police get my benefit of the doubt.
Shucks another dead druggie.
Shame, I won’t get the opportunity to meet him carrying my chainsaw or other property.. as he leave my broken into garage. I won’t see him pocket the 50 bucks he’ll get for it, nor the nice rock he’ll smoke later on.
Poor druggie….
I guess the officer in question misjudged the voltage setting! If he was on crack however, he may have died from OD, or high blood pressure, etc. etc. etc.
Amazing what a AA battery can do when it’s power is enhanced. Hey, about a 2.2 billion dollar program where the buyer of AA batteries must first register the “ammo!”
My mentally ill daughter has been dead four years now, the result of an accidental overdose of prescirbed methadone, which she had taken for the first time the night before she quit breathing.
They gave her methadonen bec. she was not able to take opiates and the docs hoped it would relieve the three kinds of migraines she suffered from. And I do mean suffered — it was unremitting pain.
Unless someone has coped for three decades with a seriously mentally ill child, they simply don’t have enough information to comment on this person or his mother. I know many adult mentally ill “children” who have no other choice; these people are often too disruptive to maintain anywhere else but home. As Frost said, “home is where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in.”
I have seen such sad cases: a young man in his second year of college who suddenly developed the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Despite medication he couldn’t seem to stabilize. I used to take him to his appointments but he was in and out of state institutions because his grip on reality was so fragile. Up unti then, he’d been a “normal” kid, whatever that is.
Another one was in his second year of med school when the symptoms appeared. End of career. Yes, he lives with his mother and he knows he’s on his last leg there: one more psychotic episode and he’s homeless. She is old and cannot handle it by herself anymore.
Another one? A beloved and only son suddenly turned psychotic in college. He became dangerous to his sibs. On one of his “breakdowns” he was banging on the front door to get in. The doctor on the phone told the parents to call the police. Before they could arrive, their twenty year old son hung himself on the front porch.
A lot of seriously mentally ill people lead chaotic lives and they drag their families down that hole with them. Until you’ve experienced it, you cannot know the hell everyone endures. A friend of mine, an Episcopal priest, takes a deep breath every time he unlocks his front door: there is no way of knowing whether or not his adult daughter has come in and trashed the place while they were gone.
I don’t blame the police; they’re not clinical social workers, they’re enforcers of the law. But I would hope that people would have more compassion for the suffering.
Try volunteering at a drop-in center for the adult mentally ill. Try making conversation with a guy who looks like an ad for L. L. Bean, a guy who takes 3 months before he’ll trust you with his first name, a guy who is absolutely sure — every Christmas — that we’re all going to die before the end of the year…meanwhile, he lives under a bridge because he doesn’t trust the indoors. In fact, at the drop-in center, he never makes it past the rocking chair on the porch, no matter how cold the weather.
Brain disorders are real. Sometimes people use illegal drugs to make it easier. Big mistake, but I can see why they try. Heck, before my experience with my daughter, I didn’t even know there were *3* kinds of migraines.
At least her hell is over. So is the one for the guy who was tasered. It’s the parents who have a hard time making it all the way back…I’m not there yet.
BTW, to commenter GDW: brains have absolutely nothing to do with brain disorders. My daughter, for all the good it did her, had an IQ of 160.
For use of tazers, standard training for this includes being tazered. When you talk about having sand, I don’t think you know what it means. Like you would willingly risk injury or death with a violent drug addict when provided with tools to lessen your risk. Tazers are provided so they don’t have to use a gun and shoot to kill. And contray to what ever you might think, when a police officer has a gun out, their only intended use is to kill. It’s what they train to do with them.