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Three NC Cops vs. One 18 YO kid

“We don’t have time for this”: Cop allegedly kills North Carolina teen who was already tased and restrained

Via Ace and Bearing Arms, I missed this yesterday but it deserves some belated attention. The victim, Keith Vidal, was schizophrenic, weighed 90 pounds, had already been tased, and reportedly was being held down by two officers when the shooting happened. He was armed with a “tiny screwdriver,” according to his family.

His dad claims that one cop said “we don’t have time for this” right before the kid was shot dead on the floor.

According to the report, the first unit on scene was a Boiling Spring Lakes officer who arrived at 12:34 p.m. He was joined shortly after by two additional BSL officers and a Brunswick County Sheriff’s Deputy.

The first unit on scene reported a confrontation in the hallway, but told Brunswick County Dispatchers several times that everything was OK.

Unit 104 from Southport arrived on the scene at 12:48:41, fourteen minutes after the first officer had already been on scene.

Seventy seconds later, Unit 104 radioed out that he had to fire shots at the subject in order to defend himself.

The event report mirrors what family members told the media…

Wilsey said officers had his son down on the ground after the teen was tased a few times and an officer said, “we don’t have time for this.” That’s when Wilsey says the officer shot in between the officers holding the teen down, killing his son.

A detective’s been placed on paid leave while the investigation plays out. Obvious question: Even if the cop was such a monster that he’d murder a mentally ill kid simply because he was a drag on his day, how did he think he’d get away with it with both parents right there watching? Is a suspension and murder investigation less of an inconvenience than wrestling a small teenaged boy into a squad car? If he was counting on a mom and dad to be intimidated into silence over the cold-blooded murder of their son, he was counting on an awful lot. I notice too that the dad doesn’t explicitly say it was the cop who fired the gun who said “we don’t have time for this.” One of the officers there said it. Was killing Vidal what he had in mind or were the comment and shooting unconnected?

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/01/...ed/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
 
Something wrong there but a story I read today indicated the family said he was "not a threat." Then... why did you call 911? The article indicated he threatened his father. No doubt the police appear to have over-reacted intentionally or otherwise. Of course, since there's an investigation we won't get the police side of this until later so at this point we're left with what the family says.
 
94Deac said:
Something wrong there but a story I read today indicated the family said he was "not a threat." Then... why did you call 911? The article indicated he threatened his father. No doubt the police appear to have over-reacted intentionally or otherwise. Of course, since there's an investigation we won't get the police side of this until later so at this point we're left with what the family says.
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Because calling 911 is the only way to get help for your mentally ill child in this fucked up country.
 
Deacon923 said:
Because calling 911 is the only way to get help for your mentally ill child in this fucked up country.
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No, it's not. Calling 911 for a police emergency will bring police, typically armed, into a domestic situation with an individual who has a clear history of psychiatric issues. That is not the best thing to do. I certainly agree with you that mental care in America is woefully lacking.

Look, I am not defending the police action (which we can only characterize based on what the family is telling us so far). But the responsibility for getting medical help for a family member isn't with law enforcement.

The Star News story certainly makes it appear the officer who came late to the scene should at the very least be suspended and, ultimately, indicted. Again though, we only have one side of this. But he's firing into a pile with two of his officers involved? Two cops tase the same small guy? As I said, something is wrong here but so is relying, repeatedly, on police to handle your family's medical issues.
 
Who else are you going to call for help when your mentally ill kid is having an outburst?

Doctors don't make house calls.

There are some agencies that will send mental health counselors to your house; they are generally very short-staffed. Don't know if that was an option for this family or not.

The parents obviously felt like they needed help to manage the situation. It happens thousands of times a day in this country I'm sure. There is a huge gulf between a kid being out of control enough that parents need help to manage the situation, and a kid who is such a dire threat to three trained police officers that the only way to save themselves is to shoot him.

Another point that was probably not in play here but is relevant to the larger discussion, is that in most places the only way to get your 18-yo (age of majority) kid involuntarily committed to get the help he needs is to get law enforcement involved. Especially if you don't have the money for a private hospital and are relying on the publicly funded mental hospitals. They won't take the kid unless law enforcement testifies that he's dangerous. You have parents being forced to try and get their kids branded as dangerous psychotics because that's the only way to get medical care.
 
A crazy kid with a screwdriver is a threat to his mom. He's not a threat to 3 cops with guns.
 
I think this is why they wanted to use tasers- the whole idea is non-lethal force. The officer who stepped in with a gun appears to have gone way overboard. Don't know what he has to say and won't for a while, if ever. But again, if your kid is such a threat to you that you call 911, what is a police officer supposed to think? I guess it's good he never got his hands on a firearm but we have to stop relying on police to be mental health professionals. It's not what we have them for; it's not something they're trained to do. They come with guns. Guns and the mentally disabled aren't a good mix, contrary to the NRA's assertions.
 
I don't know if you read the article 94, but it states pretty clearly that it was a small town, the two cops who first arrived on the scene knew the victim, and they had been called out before to calm down situations. I think a problem in all this is how you are characterizing what the role of police officers in American society is. I have had enough of the militarization of the police and turning them into a shoot first and ask questions later force. That is what you seem to think police are. There are prob 10x more situations that call for police attention like calming down a mentally disturbed man than there are situations that call for guns to be drawn. That IS a part of being a police officer. What are they supposed to do? How about don't fucking kill people unnecessarily, that would be a great starting point. Its shit like this that makes me wonder if we turned them into a force that doesn't know how to deal with a situation other than through firing guns at it.
 
94Deac said:
I think this is why they wanted to use tasers- the whole idea is non-lethal force. The officer who stepped in with a gun appears to have gone way overboard. Don't know what he has to say and won't for a while, if ever. But again, if your kid is such a threat to you that you call 911, what is a police officer supposed to think? I guess it's good he never got his hands on a firearm but we have to stop relying on police to be mental health professionals. It's not what we have them for; it's not something they're trained to do. They come with guns. Guns and the mentally disabled aren't a good mix, contrary to the NRA's assertions.
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Agree with the bolded parts. However we DO have police to deal with people who are acting in potentially dangerous ways. They aren't supposed to be mental health professionals, but they do need to be trained in how to deal with mental illness because police encounter mentally ill people every single day. They need to be trained in how to de-escalate these situations instead of escalating them. They are first responders. When there's a crazy person acting out, of course they will be the first to respond! On the other hand, I think we agree that everyone would be better off if we had a decent mental health system in this state so mentally ill people get treatment instead of continued encounters with the police until they end up dead or in jail.

P4nthers11 said:
I don't know if you read the article 94, but it states pretty clearly that it was a small town, the two cops who first arrived on the scene knew the victim, and they had been called out before to calm down situations. I think a problem in all this is how you are characterizing what the role of police officers in American society is. I have had enough of the militarization of the police and turning them into a shoot first and ask questions later force. That is what you seem to think police are. There are prob 10x more situations that call for police attention like calming down a mentally disturbed man than there are situations that call for guns to be drawn. That IS a part of being a police officer. What are they supposed to do? How about don't fucking kill people unnecessarily, that would be a great starting point. Its shit like this that makes me wonder if we turned them into a force that doesn't know how to deal with a situation other than through firing guns at it.
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Agree with this. I blame the "war on drugs" for creating an "us vs. them" mentality in the police force.
 
Pew pew pew I had to shoot that little ole Mexican boy he was crazy.
 
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Deacon923 said:
Because calling 911 is the only way to get help for your mentally ill child in this fucked up country.
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True. This is from an interview with the father of a mentally ill son on the Diane Rehm show.
MR. PETE EARLEY

Well, my son was 22 when he had his first major break, and as Dr. Torrey mentioned, he was one of those who didn't think he was sick. He didn't think anything was wrong. He was delusional. He was talking about suicide. He would cry one moment, and then he'd be laughing the next hysterically. And I rushed him to a hospital in Fairfax County. We were put in a room. We waited four hours. And then the doctor basically came in and said, there's nothing I can do to help your son. There's been no violence. There's -- obviously, he's not, at the time, the law said, imminent danger to self or others. And the fact we had been sitting there for four hours proved there was no danger. So then I was told, bring your son back after he tries to kill you or kill someone else. I took him home, watched him. At one point, he had tin foil wrapped around his head because he thought the CIA was reading his thoughts.
It was horrible watching as he slipped out of my house -- slipped out of the house early one morning and broke in a stranger's house. Luckily, no one was there. He broke in to take a bubble bath. The police took him out. And all of a sudden, my son became a person who had -- charged with two felonies. And it was just maddening. Virginia law kept me from getting him help when he needed it and now want to punish him for a crime he committed when he wasn't thinking clearly.
And we really don't have, in my opinion, a mental health system. We -- what we have is a criminal justice system. We have over 600,000 people with bipolar, schizophrenia and major depression in jails and prisons. More than a million go through the system every year. Dr. Torrey has documented that. And so what we're doing is we're turning our mental health problem over to our criminal justice system, trying to fix it that way.
REHM
How often does that happen, Dr. Torrey, that, in fact, the police are brought in rather than a mental health specialist?

ORREY

The police and sheriffs in the United States now, Diane, are the frontline mental health workers, and they know it.
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http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-12-20/identifying-and-treating-severe-mental-illness
 
More from that Diane Rehm interview:
EARLEY

Well, they took him to a community treatment center, and I rushed over. And a policeman was waiting outside, and he said, listen, Mr. Earley, even though your son has told us he has bipolar disorder, even though he's told us he's off his medication, even though we picked him up in a house taking a bubble bath, unless you go in and you tell the psychiatrist in there that your son has tried to kill you, he will not go to a treatment center. He will go to jail. And I said, well, my son hasn't done that. And he said, listen, if you don't want him in jail, you need to say that. And I went in, and I lied.
And it hurt my relationship with my son, but that was good enough to get him into the hospital where he voluntarily committed. Twenty-four hours later, the insurance company called. They wanted him out. They said he was not dangerous. And I actually called -- I was fortunate enough to be friends with Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes," who suffered from depression. And Mike called that insurance company, and, all of a sudden, my son was allowed to stay in the hospital. Amazing. But in the short time between my son's breakdown to get him in the hospital, I had lied to get him into treatment...
And, you know, when I did my research -- Fairfax County, one of the richest counties in the United States. When I did my research, there was a two-week wait to get into a treatment program, a six-month wait to get a case manager and an 18-year wait to get into any kind of housing program. That's shameful. That's what's crazy.
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People that have a passion for being everyday custodians of American Civil Rights and upholding the law, are those that we need joining NC's police forces... and we do have many of them.

Not uneducated people with an overwhelming desire for power and authority complex, that were too scared to leave home and join the military.... and we have many of them as well.
 
Great post, DeaconOEF.
 
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