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Brad Parscale Beats Wife Then Threatens to Commit Suicide

Shooshmoo said:
This. Social workers should be immediately involved after the person is in a controlled environment. What social worker is going to sign up to respond, unarmed, and apparently without police presence (?), to an unhinged, drunk guy with a weapons cache who is beating his wife and threatening suicide?
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Ok, but this is how you end up with dead mental health patients that were crying out for help in the only way they know how.
 
This situation is not the example to use for replacing police with social workers.
The wife thought he had shot himself and reported that he was acting erratically with a cache of guns. That sort of report should always draw a police response, not a social work response.
Then the guy refused to cooperate with police or come out of the house for several hours. [ETA: this is a place where a mental health professional could have been useful, but not alone or in lieu of a police response.]
The criticisms I have here are limited to the final few moments where the police officer decides to aggressively tackle an obviously unarmed man to the pavement when he was not threatening anyone. LOL at the assertion that Brad's cutoffs "could have easily concealed a firearm". OK, no, and also he was surrounded by about 10 cops with assault rifles and body armor. Whatever peashooter or pocketknife he theoretically might have been concealing in there was not a threat. They could have continued to talk him down and get him in custody without violence, but I suspect that Officer Bodyslam was getting tired and impatient of being out in the Florida sun dealing with Brad's bullshit. Understandable, but does not justify violence.
There are probably hundreds of situations in America every day that could be handled better by mental health/social workers than police, but this isn't one of them.
 
Deacon923 said:
This situation is not the example to use for replacing police with social workers.
The wife thought he had shot himself and reported that he was acting erratically with a cache of guns. That sort of report should always draw a police response, not a social work response.
Then the guy refused to cooperate with police or come out of the house for several hours. [ETA: this is a place where a mental health professional could have been useful, but not alone or in lieu of a police response.]
The criticisms I have here are limited to the final few moments where the police officer decides to aggressively tackle an obviously unarmed man to the pavement when he was not threatening anyone. LOL at the assertion that Brad's cutoffs "could have easily concealed a firearm". OK, no, and also he was surrounded by about 10 cops with assault rifles and body armor. Whatever peashooter or pocketknife he theoretically might have been concealing in there was not a threat. They could have continued to talk him down and get him in custody without violence, but I suspect that Officer Bodyslam was getting tired and impatient of being out in the Florida sun dealing with Brad's bullshit. Understandable, but does not justify violence.
There are probably hundreds of situations in America every day that could be handled better by mental health/social workers than police, but this isn't one of them.
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I don’t get this...if he had a hostage you’d send a hostage negotiator with armed police as back up. The negotiators job is to walk the guy back from the edge and de-escalate the situation. In the case of a suicide threat the person is basically holding them selves hostage why wouldn’t you send some one there, with back up, who is trained to talk the situation down and de-escalate?
 
birdman said:
I don’t get this...if he had a hostage you’d send a hostage negotiator with armed police as back up. The negotiators job is to walk the guy back from the edge and de-escalate the situation. In the case of a suicide threat the person is basically holding them selves hostage why wouldn’t you send some one there, with back up, who is trained to talk the situation down and de-escalate?
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yes, and that's why i put in the ETA in the "talk down" phase. There is always a place for trained mental health professionals in these sorts of stand offs, or should be. A hostage negotiator is essentially a very highly specialized mental health professional.

A major goal of police reform/defunding activists is to greatly reduce the situations where an armed police response is deployed at all, and instead deploy unarmed mental health pros to deescalate and get treatment. That's why I was mentioning replacing police with social workers. I think that is a good goal and could help avoid a lot violence and get people the help they need. My point is that this Parscale situation is not one where the armed police response can or should be entirely replaced. And unfortunately, crazy people with caches of guns are all too common in this country.
 
Deacon923 said:
yes, and that's why i put in the ETA in the "talk down" phase. There is always a place for trained mental health professionals in these sorts of stand offs, or should be. A hostage negotiator is essentially a very highly specialized mental health professional.

A major goal of police reform/defunding activists is to greatly reduce the situations where an armed police response is deployed at all, and instead deploy unarmed mental health pros to deescalate and get treatment. That's why I was mentioning replacing police with social workers. I think that is a good goal and could help avoid a lot violence and get people the help they need. My point is that this Parscale situation is not one where the armed police response can or should be entirely replaced. And unfortunately, crazy people with caches of guns are all too common in this country.
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Ok, that's cool. I am not one of the get" rid of all police" kind of guys. I'm a get rid of racist police and reduce the number of armed police citizen interactions kind of guys. I definitely think that armed police were warranted here especially to make sure the wife was safe. 10 body armored with AR-15 officers seems asymmetric, but police presence was warranted. My problem starts with engaging the guy after the wife is secured. That should not be a body armored heavily armed meatheads job. It should be someone who is trained to de-escalate situations.
 
Deacon923 said:
This situation is not the example to use for replacing police with social workers.
The wife thought he had shot himself and reported that he was acting erratically with a cache of guns. That sort of report should always draw a police response, not a social work response.
Then the guy refused to cooperate with police or come out of the house for several hours. [ETA: this is a place where a mental health professional could have been useful, but not alone or in lieu of a police response.]
The criticisms I have here are limited to the final few moments where the police officer decides to aggressively tackle an obviously unarmed man to the pavement when he was not threatening anyone. LOL at the assertion that Brad's cutoffs "could have easily concealed a firearm". OK, no, and also he was surrounded by about 10 cops with assault rifles and body armor. Whatever peashooter or pocketknife he theoretically might have been concealing in there was not a threat. They could have continued to talk him down and get him in custody without violence, but I suspect that Officer Bodyslam was getting tired and impatient of being out in the Florida sun dealing with Brad's bullshit. Understandable, but does not justify violence.
There are probably hundreds of situations in America every day that could be handled better by mental health/social workers than police, but this isn't one of them.
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The only issue with "talking him down" when he is potentially armed is that if he does pull out a knife or gun, then the situation is immediately escalated to a point where those assault rifles might be used. By tackling him, he is immediately neutralized with little to no harm to anyone.
 
Why not just handcuff him or ask him to lie down before tackling him?
 
The video I have seen starts when he walks off the porch and begins talking to the officer. Then I hear someone off camera shout "get on the ground" and then within 2 seconds there is a take down. It is possible that before the video clip begins they had been telling him to get on the ground etc. multiple times. Still he did not look at all threatening during the video and the takedown looked like excessive force to me, even if he wasn't complying immediately.
 
DistrictDeacon said:
The only issue with "talking him down" when he is potentially armed is that if he does pull out a knife or gun, then the situation is immediately escalated to a point where those assault rifles might be used. By tackling him, he is immediately neutralized with little to no harm to anyone.
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Until he resists the tackle and then they have to put a knee on his neck or shoot him. It worked out ok in this instance but on the whole this type of approach to mental heath crises leads to avoidable mortalities or serious injuries. I'm telling you, I've been on the receiving end of this type of policing, with my daughter as the one in crisis and no one was tackled because I managed to keep my composure, and it is scary as fuck to have three cops with the hands on their weapons shouting questions and instructions at you. The guns and the aggressive tone and stance of the officers only serves to make the person in crisis feel more paranoid and more prone to rash, irrational decision making.
 
birdman said:
Until he resists the tackle and then they have to put a knee on his neck or shoot him. It worked out ok in this instance but on the whole this type of approach to mental heath crises leads to avoidable mortalities or serious injuries. I'm telling you, I've been on the receiving end of this type of policing, with my daughter as the one in crisis and no one was tackled because I managed to keep my composure, and it is scary as fuck to have three cops with the hands on their weapons shouting questions and instructions at you. The guns and the aggressive tone and stance of the officers only serves to make the person in crisis feel more paranoid and more prone to rash, irrational decision making.
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I'm betting your daughter also didn't have a gun or just hit their wife.
 
DistrictDeacon said:
I'm betting your daughter also didn't have a gun or just hit their wife.
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I wrote out a whole response describing my own personal situation but I deleted it. There was no gun involved but there was potentially life threatening violence and significant property destruction and the police response was unhelpful; pretty much the opposite of why I called 911. If you are comfortable with mental health patients getting threatened and beat and maybe killed by cops who aren't equipped to handle those situations, good for you and I hope you never end up on the receiving end. Personally, I think it is the wrong approach.
 
thatguy2016 said:
A little empathy would go a long way here, even if you vehemently disagree with birdman's take regarding the Parscale arrest
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You mean the kind of empathy needed to descalate a situation with the right resources rather than come in guns blazing?
 
deaconson said:
You mean the kind of empathy needed to descalate a situation with the right resources rather than come in guns blazing?
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let's start with empathy for a fellow WF alumnus talking about a very tough time in his kid's life
 
birdman said:
I wrote out a whole response describing my own personal situation but I deleted it. There was no gun involved but there was potentially life threatening violence and significant property destruction and the police response was unhelpful; pretty much the opposite of why I called 911. If you are comfortable with mental health patients getting threatened and beat and maybe killed by cops who aren't equipped to handle those situations, good for you and I hope you never end up on the receiving end. Personally, I think it is the wrong approach.
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And if you're OK with mental health professionals being possibly killed by an unstable person with a gun, good for you.
 
PhDeac said:
I don’t understand why that would matter here. If he doesn’t comply then tackle him.



Dude. Not cool.
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1) He didn't comply

2) Spare me your fake outrage. birdman voluntarily offered his personal experience. I have no idea if the police response was warranted it that case. I was contrasting it with Brad's situation, which clearly called for something more than soothing words to ensure the safety of all involved.
 
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