While much is written about the innocents caught up in the criminal justice system, reality is that many who find themselves in custody have good reason to be there. Among this group, unfortunately, are people who suffer significant mental illness. They can be violent. They can be irrational. They’re crazy. For police, dealing with crazies is part of the job. At least it should be.
When a crazy ends up in a precinct lockup, the next step is to call in EMTs to transport a person to a hospital for treatment. In a very real sense, that this is the route chosen reflects a grasp that the mentally ill aren’t necessarily criminals, but people in need of medical treatment. It may not be a fully developed grasp of the difference between a person acting out a psychotic episode and a criminal, but it’s better than nothing.
Yet, one would hope that the recognition that a person in custody is crazy would stem the urge to react to their craziness in kind. That wasn’t the case at the 67 Precinct in Brooklyn, where Emergency Services cops, theoretically trained to handle such situations, lost it big time. From the Daily News:
The violence broke out when the patient spit at the Emergency Service Unit officers and swore at them. The officers responded by hitting him in the face, hauling him off the stretcher to the ground and then tossing him back on the stretcher . . .
The emotionally disturbed patient was punched multiple times in the face by the cops . . .
And we learn this not because it appeared on video, or a cop stood up and stopped these ESU cops from pounding the face of the crazy guy, but because the EMTs there to transport the emotionally disturbed prisoner for treatment physically blocked the ESU cops from continuing their beating, and then reported the cops’ conduct.
Two FDNY EMTs who had to intervene to stop four police officers beating a handcuffed patient on a stretcher have turned the cops in to authorities, the Daily News has learned.
While few things will light a fuse under a cop who lacks the innate self-control to not resort to violence than a person spitting at them, there are two significant details here that can’t be ignored. First, the person was cuffed, which a cop might suggest means little since cuffs don’t prevent someone from spitting at them. Second, the person was crazy.
No one suggests that cops need to suffer in silence when a person spits at them, but the solution is putting a mask over their mouth to prevent them from spitting, not beating them in the head to vent their anger.
The reaction of violence to every affront is just as crazy as spitting. When the EMTs were called in to handle a crazy, they likely weren’t expecting the cops to be just as crazy as the perp on their stretcher.
In the aftermath of Eric Garner’s death by chokehold, the outcry from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s supporters is to end his new Police Commissioner’s Broken Windows policy, which is being blamed as the impetus for Garner’s takedown, and death. This focus on police tactics is grossly misdirected.
There are plenty of issues surrounding police tactics, from Broken Windows to Stop and Frisk, which are ripe for discussion as far as their effectiveness in achieving legitimate goals and consequences of their implementation. But don’t blame tactics for the unconstrained use of force by NYPD officers. The immediate resort to violence is a fundamental problem that demands fixing regardless of today’s tactical flavor.
This isn’t to suggest that there shouldn’t be debate about the efficacy of Bill Bratton’s beloved Broken Windows policy. But the beating of an emotionally disturbed person in the 67 Precinct who spit at cops isn’t a police issue. It’s a culture issue. It’s an issue of use of force as the first tool in dealing with anything that pisses a cop off.
Any discussion that fails to comprehend that the culture of violence by cops toward the public is at the core of the problem is wasted. Regardless of tactical policy, the use of violence as the primary means of dealing with people must stop. To ignore this is just plain crazy. There are already too many violent crazies out there, and we cannot continue to ignore that many of them wear a police uniform.
And we can’t rely on there always being an EMT in the area prepared to put himself between a violent cop and the guy whose face is being beaten.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
EMTs and hospital workers deal with people like this all day, and don’t beat them. Postal employees and deliverymen deal with dogs all day, and don’t shoot them. (The USPS literally reports *zero* cases of their employees killing dogs.) You’re absolutely right that it’s a cultural issue, one where force is too often the first option.
While both sides fight over the fringes of tactical policy, nobody is focusing on how the resort to violence is a fixture in police culture regardless of tactics. Everybody wants to fix “the problem,” without giving adequate thought to the culture of violence that permeates police conduct.
Mental illness is a real thing. These savages might as well have been beating someone dying from cancer or multiple sclerosis who happened to be handcuffed to a gurney.
I suppose it would be too much to ask — and pay for — to have an EMT stationed at, well, police stations?
Rotate them among the precincts to avoid developing familial relationships, of course.
That “familial” relationship is what makes the fact that the EMTs reported this astounding. EMTs and ESU cops have a symbiotic relationship; when there’s trouble, they rely on each other. It’s quite extraordinary that the EMTs would take the chance that they next time they need ESU support, they will leave them hanging in payback for protecting this guy and reporting the cops.
Just guessing but it might have had something to do with the handcuffs and the location.
Some lines still exist perhaps?
Had this happened in the field it would have been a simple triage and transport.
P.S. We don’t know what “really” happened yet anyway. Pat Lynch had yet to fill us in on the character of the individuals involved. 😉
I wonder what Pat will say given that expectations for this cuffed crazy are already a bit low.
Well it is a violation of the law to spit at officers and had they not beat him they surely would have been head butted.
I think Pat is currently having the blood of the cuffed man tested for evidence to further charges of attempted murder.
If he fails to find the common could virus or any other cooties like hepatitis in the blood sample my guess is Pat will learn that the prisoner must have said something that no one heard except the officers, that insinuated the spit was in fact attempted murder pathogen positive even if it was a bluff.
Hey, the officers were just selflessly protecting the EMT’s at great risk of bodily harm to themselves.
Why stop there? Why not go with
Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units out in the neighborhoods.
Think of all the great PR potential and new twists that could make the cop shows on the TeeVee interesting again.
I will start the design work on the Flag. Now we just need some more follow through from the media and politicians with a little help from police captains, prosecutors, and a few retired judges to more clearly define the enemy.
Just think of all the new dynamic and proactive strategies that could be deployed by law enforcement during neighborhood building policing operations if they new there was a MASH unit a few blocks over that could take care of any spit launched in their direction during combat.
P.S. I wonder if the food will be any good in the field hospitals?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4sqBYziYBAs
A) A friend is an ex-NYC “paramuppet” {his term..} He describes many situations where he responded to precinct holding cells for various injuries. He got lots of heat for writing call reports saying {victim} “reported NYPD struck him on head with flashlight…” etc.
B) “The immediate resort to violence is a fundamental problem that demands fixing regardless of today’s tactical flavor.”
But the fix, at least one important step of such, is holding the cops accountable to the same laws they allegedly enforce. And by that I mean via the courts, not days off with pay, etc. I’m not holding my breath for this, however.
c) “I suppose it would be too much to ask — and pay for — to have an EMT stationed at, well, police stations?”
Cameras are cheaper; an FBI agent {as PG County had for multiple years…} more effective.