The news is making me ill this morning

[spinbaby]

I live in Washington, PA and have been watching the local news as presented by the Pittsburgh stations.

Sarah Palin signs books in Washington: She's so wonderful. She's so popular. She's a real patriot. She's for American values.

Man having seizure gets tazed and dies in Washington: He was mentally ill. Bit a police officer. Probably deserved it.


Okay, they didn't actually say he probably deserved it, but they stopped just short of saying it.


:mad:

[Walk away]

1. Guess what. We don't live in Canada or in a European country!

Welcome to America. It was never a kind or rational counrty. If we ever had a hope of going in that direction it ended with Jimmy Carter. In general it's a big, selfish, stupid place where it isn't safe to be anything but White and armed.

[SammyWinstonJack]

3. +1

:thumbsup:

[imdjh]

4. hyperbole much?

[imdjh]

2. Sounds like a damned if you do situation.

I've never heard of someone having a seizure being able to actually fight off a police officer and run into traffic, so this is some definition of seizure I am unfamiliar with. But had the officer not tried to subdue the man, it isn't difficult to imagine people claiming the officer simply watched as the man ran into traffic.

[spinbaby]

6. Yeah, you're right

But I was just so infuriated by the way it came off on TV. I know a man who's an EMS in the fire department and is familiar with this guy--says he was very seriously mentally ill and quite impaired. He suspects the man had something like a brain tumor going on. In a civilized society, he would have gotten the treatment he needed and not been tazed in the street.

[imdjh]

7. What do you mean by that?

Not speaking to this man because I'm not familiar with him, but the streets are crawling with people who are probably to a greater or lesser extent mentally ill (especially if you include drug/alcohol damage as mental illness) who apparently refuse to be institutionalized when given the choice. Like the case of the more dysfunctional bipolar types who refuse to take their medication, and are quite aware of what they are doing by refusing as well as their "right" to refuse, what would you do with then mentally ill who have it together enough to refuse treatment because "it kills my soul" or some other such horseshit? We might think refusing treatment for mental illness is a symptom of mental illness itself, but the law doesn't see it that way. It's easier to put someone in a prison than it is a mental institution.

[spinbaby]

8. What DO you do with them?

I don't know. This particular man I suspect had something physically wrong--I may be wrong on that, I'm just going on hearsay. But I've known a paranoid schizophrenic who refused treatment, ruined the lives of everyone around him, and eventually drank himself to death in a Motel 6 at the age of 56.

[imdjh]

5. Here's your link

http://www.officer.com/web/online/Top-News-Stories/Pa-Man-Goes-into-Cardiac-Arrest-after-Being-Tasered/1$49422