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The police really need to be trained properly on how to properly interact with mentally ill persons that they come in contact with. They are given a complete license to assess, evaluate, and take action on any given scenario, without having the proper training. I know, we never had any extensive training on how to deal with mentally ill people.
At the very least they should have stepped back, let the guy watch 10-15 minutes of the movie, and figure out a better approach to someone with clear mental incapacities.
Mental health is not understood well by police at all. This is where the compassion needs to rise to the top and enforcing the law becomes secondary, depending on the crime being committed, or danger that they're presenting to themselves or others. Clearly nothing was at stake here. A 20 dollar movie ticket to watch a rerun of the movie. Not really something that couldn't have been sorted another way.
Every case is different, but I can tell you that when you deal with people with mental conditions, they're unpredictable, especially when provoked. They did not handle this well at all.
There were so many options, but the letter of the law won out and they treated him with direct compliance to the law instead of having compassion that he isn't the same kind of people that we are. Very sad news here.
We're headed for police reform in the USA.
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