Less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door, police shot Yong Yang in his parents’ Koreatown home while he was holding a knife during a bipolar episode.
Parents in Los Angeles’ Koreatown called for mental health help in the middle of their son’s bipolar episode this month. Clinical personnel showed up — and so did police shortly after.
Police fatally shot Yong Yang, 40, who had a knife in his hand, less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door to his parents’ apartment where he had locked himself in, newly released bodycam video shows.
Now the parents of Yang, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder around 15 years ago, have told NBC News exclusively that they are disputing part of the account captured on bodycam, in which police recount a clinician’s saying Yang was violent before the shooting on May 2.
I mean, every criticism you level at the parents sounds like people worried that if they call police its going to go badly.
I have a severely autistic son. There is literally no circumstance where I would call the police for any event involving him. Unless there is a dead body on the floor, they are not getting a call.
I’m in a weird dichotomy where I need to be sure he knows to trust police in case somehow he’s alone and needs help one day, while at the same time realizing that if he gets to that point he’s probably fucked, and praying there is never, ever a time where he interacts with police without my wife or I between him and them. I can’t say “look for a fireman” or “look for an ambulance” because there isn’t always one of them around. But you never have to wait too long to see a cop.
Hopefully if that ever happens, he’ll stumble across one of the less trigger-happy ones.
I will always advocate that a big area where police could improve their standing with the communities they serve is to always strive toward better, non-lethal handling of situations where the circumstances are appropriate; however, handling individuals with behavioral / mental disabilities isn’t simple…
Nearly every single time I have seen someone make this particular excuse for police, a nurse or other staff from a healthcare facility will crop up to point out that they do it all day every day without having to kill people.
Here’s a hypothetical for you, if your son had an episode and took someone hostage with a knife, you wouldn’t call the police?
Sure, OK, you have found a corner case. Bravo, I guess? We can pretend I was using the modern definition of the word “literally.” 😉
It doesn’t change the overall point.
Here’s a hypothetical for you, which is far more likely than your own for an autistic kid. My son doesn’t even have the concept of holding someone hostage, and I venture to guess this is true for lots of others on the spectrum.
Let’s say he has a knife in his hand because that’s what he happened to have in his hand (somehow) when his fight or flight mechanism was triggered, and now he’s massively overstimulated, and in a meltdown. He’s not trying to hurt anyone (I’m not convinced he knows stabbing someone is an option a knife provides), but he’s waving it around because he is very active with his arms when he’s overstimulated, and he might even try to grapple with someone while holding it, again not really recognizing the potential for great harm. It’s going to be a real challenge to get it from him safely, and someone could get badly injured.
Do I call the cops in that circumstance? Not if I want to see him sans-bulletholes again. (Not a direct example of what I described, but close enough for these purposes.)
Edited to add - I read the story in OP, or I read about Linden Cameron, or I read about Elijah McClain (and others) and that’s my son there, or may as well be. Elijah McClain especially - heartbreaking. Nothing about any of those circumstances seems like an outcome I couldn’t imagine with any given group of police. I have no faith that more than a vanishingly small percentage would even see the problem with how these situations were handled, let alone try to do it differently.
I’d try to be understanding with the parents, but I admit family waiting too long is a problem. I remember watching this video and getting frustrated at every missed opportunity…
