Somebody once called the suicide hotline at my dorm and the cops showed up. This lead to everyone in the dorm knowing she called the hotline, probably not the outcome she intended at all.
I think a big reason so many people deal with depression in silence and end up committing suicide is because they don't want the attention or being put into the mental health system. They need someone who'll listen to them be completely honest about all the problems that they can't be open about with friends and get it all out without the whole neighborhood knowing or being fucking detained.
Plenty of people are going through temporary troubles and don't want "depressed/suicidal/a risk to themselves and others" tacked onto their name forever. But as it is, a lot of our mental health frameworks are set up that way and it leads to people choosing a quieter way out.
I know loads of people will defend wellness checks or putting people in a hospital for a while. For some people going through extreme crises, it is good. But we need a very clear and obvious option for people who aren't a danger to others and just need an anonymous chat once in a while and want to be left alone the minute they hang up the phone. I think men in particular, especially since a large number have nobody who they can honestly vent about their problems with, are in need of something like this. They don't want to be seen as weak, they don't want to be thrown into the system, they just need someone to talk to.
A men are the first suiciders, so it’s worth weighing this is. Once we find a group for them where they can share the problems they have with women, they’re generally defused and talk about their thoughts years later. It’s living in the omerta and denial of women’s issues that multiplies anger.
The vast majority of people who call suicide hotlines do it for this purpose.
A problem is there's a "risk" in calling. There's no 100% guarantee that you won't get a knock on your door 30 minutes later.
I know people will say that suicide has a clear and obvious risk, too. The problem is that people fear the embarrassment of being paid a visit or people knowing about their troubles more than they do death.
Maybe I have low expectations but stopping doing something because they're killing too many people unnecessarily seems like a big and uncommon step in the right direction for most law enforcement agencies. Usually they just deny, deny, deny.
I believe that most cops are good, but the position definitely attracts people who like violence/power. I don't know the solution here, but there has to be a way to help good cops get the recognition they deserve without forcing them to betray their fellow officers to eliminate the bad.
There was a large group of arsehole youth tearing through the area on their dirtbikes, and some fellow came off his bike, he escaped by hopping on his friend's bike, but the bike was left behind, and the police had to remove it.
In the video we are treated to a group of officers egging on a colleague to get on the bike and take it to the precinct. The victim had clearly never ridden motorbike before, and it ends up as expected, the guy tears across a busy intersection through a red light, wipes out, nearly hitting two cars. And then he picks himself up from the ground and none of his "friends" assists him. Oh, and no helmet, no protective clothing, presumably no license, but open weapons. The guy did something wrong and was made fun of in public.
Unit discipline in the leading city in the US is bad beyond all description. There is no good cop in all of that video, not a single one. They all deserve to have serious discipline imposed, but that will never happen.