Nursing home resident dead after confrontation with police

[Aidey]

Pepper spray in a assisted living home is a bad idea to me. You've got a vulnerable population and probably whole building ventilation system. You could turn the situation into an MCI.

 

[Aidey]

True. All it means is that he died from blunt force trauma due to the bean bag rounds, and not a natural disease or process.

It doesn't even mean that. A natural process complicated by another person's actions is still homicide. So he could have had a leaking AAA and they'd still call it homicide.

 

[Handsome Robb]

Pepper spray in a assisted living home is a bad idea to me. You've got a vulnerable population and probably whole building ventilation system. You could turn the situation into an MCI.

I was thinking the same thing... Blast him with OC and watch the entire home need to be transported.

 

[Rialaigh]

Pepper spray in a assisted living home is a bad idea to me. You've got a vulnerable population and probably whole building ventilation system. You could turn the situation into an MCI.

Fair nuff, but I'm sure with about 20 minutes of thought we could each come up with a couple things better than a taser and shotgun in this situation

 

[Carlos Danger]

What happened to professional respect for our co-responders and not judging their actions without knowing the full situation? How do you know he wasn't a larger, still capable 95 year old? I've met plenty of 90-100 year old patients who're sharp as a tack and still very physically capable. That article has zero information in it.

The problem is that police tactics in general have evolved to be much more aggressive than they used to be. It is part of an intentional strategy of mitigating officer risk by quickly neutralizing "threats". It's why you see SWAT teams used to break down doors for things that they used to send 1 or 2 officers to knock on and then politely ask questions about.

The news is absolutely filled with stories of cops shooting unarmed people, shooting small dogs and even children, beating people in handcuffs, using SWAT teams to raid homes of people who aren't even suspected of violent crimes, etc.

I'm certainly not saying all cops are bad, but these incidents are not isolated and are an unintended effect of a deliberate strategy. Cops these days are taught to be aggressive and to interpret any resistance at all as a serious threat and to accept very little risk to themselves. It is a big part of the culture at many police agencies.

No wonder we don't get any respect as a profession...we don't even get it from people who are part of our profession.

If we aren't allowed to speculate at all, then there is no sense in discussing anything, really, since none of us ever know the whole story and the whole truth about anything, unless we were actually there. We would literally have almost nothing to talk about.

I generally try to withhold judgment and give the benefit of the doubt, but it gets harder and harder to do the more you read about these things. So I can't really help it when I question that 4+ presumably young and fit paramedics, officers, and staff had no choice at all but to use violence to subdue an elderly patient who almost certainly has serious co-morbidities and was probably just suffering an episode of delirium.

I know I wasn't there, but I find it extremely unlikely that there really was no other option.

As both a citizen and an EMS professional, I think this is a very worthy topic to discuss.