I don't know if it's training or personal experience, but there has been a plethora of police officers, sheriffs, etc that have only been stopped from escalating situations involving my brother by my father or another police officer who is less gung ho to kick it up to 10 on the action meter.

My brother has something that is obviously wrong with his mental state, it was believed it was drug related (marijuana specifically...possibly laced) but after he spent over a month in jail for outbursts in court and during drug testing he was worse. My parents have tried to get him treated but it's remarkably difficult to force an adult into treatment they refuse, all it takes is a no from the patient at any point and the doctor will stop whether they agree or not....he was even released from psychological evaluation holds by different doctors than the ones who placed them (72 hour hold suddenly becomes 4 hours type deal). The police agencies would rather lock him up for months on end than send him to a facility to force treatment on him. That said, this had some situations where the majority of police basically wanted to kick his ass when they got involved and were restrained by my father or another police officer.

One situation was where he snapped for the first time, he wasn't hurting anyone but he did smash a cell phone and lock himself in the house. From the story multiple people called police, my mother, a younger brother, and neighbors. They showed up, he had locked himself in the house. My dad shows up and tells them to wait outside and he'll get him to come out peacefully, they tell my dad to move aside and that they are going to have to kick in the door to "deal with him". At this point my dad tells them "You're not kicking in my damn door, so either you leave or I get him to come out." They attempt to kick in the door anyway, leaving a big black mark down the door from their boots. Basically they were ready to go in and rough him up on the notion that he was inside murdering everyone....even though you could see his figure on the other side of the glass door holding the lock so it couldn't be unlocked.


Second, he was at the courthouse...this would be after he's had the law called on him multiple times for acting irrationally...trying to get someone to make it so my parents could force treatment on him to try to get him thinking more clearly. He's in court for drug possession, he rants at the judge, she let's him go. One out of half a dozen police officers there tells the others that he'll handle it, because the rest of them want to tackle and subdue him thinking he's high on something. They take him over to be drug tested by the judge's orders, he refuses like he does everything else...the one officer who took responsibility for him stopped them from taking him down yet again. He called and got the judge's permission to arrest him for the outbursts and refusal....and they stick him in jail. They attempt to get him a mental evaluation, he's sent to a mental evaluation facility. So my brother lucks out and gets an officer who actually tries to get him the help he needs through the judge where the rest of the officers wanted to tackle him and lock him up. But then they fuck up yet again, send him to be tested for competency but nothing else. So he still has an undiagnosed and untreated mental disorder, but they find him competent because he understands why he is on trial. They gladly gloss over the fact that the only medication he will willing take is marijuana or pill form equivalents of THC called marinol or something like that for cancer patients....which they won't give him...and he's on trial for drug possession. No druggie in their right mind is going to ask to be treated with an illegal substance when that's whats keeping him from being out on the streets where he can get more drugs.

He got put on house arrest after all this (not even for the drug charges because he has never been sentenced on this yet due to all this competency stuff and how slow the court is). He was court ordered to seek treatment and follow doctor's orders....which of course my brother won't take any medication but what he demands. So back into jail he goes. Except this time they stick him in general population...he was there for about 2 days before a couple of guys beat the hell out of him. They dragged him out of bed off a top bunk and initial evaluations were that he'd need surgery to fix his arm, but they've changed their opinion on that since. He won't admit to getting beat up, says he fell. Even though investigators are certain he was beaten.

So he's in medical holding while everyone hopes they finally force treatment on him to get him straightened out. But I suspect they put him on trial for the drug charges untreated/undiagnosed and let him continue to bring suffering upon my parents as they try to get him treated......which the law won't allow them to force treatment on him unless they take guardianship of him etc etc......and they won't help you with that either.

Basically what Im saying is, cops in general aren't the problem. It's just a general inability or disdain for doing anything that doesn't follow procedure. Chances are the guy who was killed in this news story is just as messed up as my brother, and if my father hadn't been there to mitigate the police response or a specific officer hasn't been there in court...my brother could have been killed in a similar fashion. I've tried to talk to him about this crap he thinks, he's just totally irrational and it pisses you off fast trying to talk to him about anything....so if someone thought he was dangerous I could see them progressing to lethal force if he acted even remotely aggressive. It ain't right, but I suspect it's what they are taught or what is expected out of them 99% of the time and if they don't react in that manner and an officers gets hurt..they'd probably be in deeper shit than if they shot the guy. It doesn't make it any better, but it seems like a pretty simplistic view to take. And mental disorders are only going to increased and worsen as the economic problems continue.

>> ^sirex:
why did noone stop the escalator ?


That's what I said when I watched this. What a bunch of asses, they sit there and laugh and take pictures, but nobody thinks to push the emergency stop button so the ducks can get to the top and out of the way.

why did noone stop the escalator ? and why are there ducks indoors ?

"There is no clear plan for the deployment of the extra 21,000 troops. Most will be stationed in Iraq and the Anbar province. There is no additional task given to these other then blanket security operations which would only mean exposing the troops to more hostile fire."

Yes, it will expose more soldiers to hostile fire. The fact remains however that casualties throughout the Iraq War have been remarkably light given the nature and length of operations we have been conducting there. Over 3,000 deaths and 20,000+ wounded looks horrible on paper, and is certainly tragic, but the reality is that the casualty rates are not yet high enough to have any significant impact on combat effectiveness. If a given Rifle company loses 7 men and has about 25 wounded over the course of a one year tour (these were the casualties sustained in a cavalry company commanded by a friend of mine), there will be very little impact on the overall combat effectiveness of said company. Yes, casualties are bad but so long as they do not significantly impact combat effectiveness they have no tactical or operational impact upon the conduct of a war. They do however further sour public opinion, but at this stage of the game I think the people who will only support a war below a certain casualty threshold have long since stopped supporting the Iraq war.

"At the same time you are dropping an influx of troops into a country where 70% of the population looks upon your forces as occupiers. All that would do is unify the resistance and insurgency against coalition forces even more."

Certainly true, but at the same time the Iraqis are absolutely desperate for some kind of security and increasingly do not care who provides it:

"Now, it's one thing to say that polls show -- American commanders say it -- that most Iraqis, 80 percent of them, do not like being occupied, true. But if you ask any individual Iraqi in any of these areas whether he would rather see more of American troops, they almost invariably say, "Yes," unless they're members of the Mahdi army or one of the militias, because that's what brings calm to the area." -John Burns, New York Times Baghdad Bureau Chief

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june07/baghdad_01-10.html

"It is best I do not use her name. Any Iraqi known to have contact with foreigners is at risk. And security is the only issue that matters now, she says. "Everything depends on it. I am not worrying about democracy, about the economy. The security comes first, and we've lost that." ' -Andrew North, BBC Correspondent, Baghdad

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6192815.stm

The point is that it really does not seem like the Iraqis really care who provides security, at this point, so long as they don't need to be constantly afraid of getting kidnapped or killed by a carbomb. We can talk about cultural differences and national pride etc. but I know that if I had been living in such conditions for several years, I'd be willing to be under "foreign occupation" if it meant I could stop being constantly afraid for myself and my family. Based upon what the above two, and other correspondents are reporting I'd say that the average Iraqi is in a similar state of mind.

"Either way, what will that force increase do without a clear working plan? Are US forces going to be used to actively suppress the Sunni or Shi'a militias?"

That's my understanding. Due to a lack of US and Iraqi National troops a security vacuum was created in Iraq. The Sunni insurgency was able to take such firm root because of said vacuum. The Sunni insurgency eventually began targeting Shiites, which prompted the Shiites to form militias for their own protection. Reprisal killings sparked reprisal killings and the result is a Sunni-Shi'a civil war on top of the original Sunni insurgency. The idea behind the surge is to provide sufficient US forces to establish joint security sites in the key neighborhoods of Baghdad that will take the place of the various militias. If you can get a (relatively) impartial third party providing security in lieu of sectarian militias, you have a possibility of slowing down or even stopping the escalation of reprisal killings.

Tags changed from "iraq, veterans, stop the escalation" to "iraq, veterans, stop the escalation, ad" by gold star member silvercord.