Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
I’d like to tell you a little story today about why a lot of problems need social workers, not cops.
a long long time ago…like 2010, I worked 2nd shift (2pm-10pm) in a homeless shelter. I worked on a floor specifically for men with addiction and mental health problems. For most of the shift, I was the only staff working. Most of the time, the job was chill to the point of being boring. My job was to do the little things that needed doing, and be always ready to respond if shit went down. Most of the time, nothing much happened.
So one day I’m sitting at my little desk, trying to get up the motivation to organize the food pantry a little bit, and I head SCREAMING.
By the time I’m on my feet, one of the residents was in view. Dude was 6ft 4, with a shaved head, and a SOLID build. He was screaming down the hall, and in his raised fist he had, I shit you not, a blood-covered meat cleaver. He was spattered in blood all over. I knew the man- I knew all the residents. He mostly kept to himself. Sometimes he’d talk to me about his hallucinations and paranoid delusions. (no question these ones were delusions, kids. Man eating pythons can not fit in a half inch radiator pipe.) He had a history of getting pretty worked up.
Switch the camera around 180 degrees. I was 120 lbs and 5ft 4 on a good day, and all by my self. Totally unarmed.
Ask yourself- what would an armed cop do in that situation- alone, with a huge man running at them with a huge bloody knife?
I’m not gonna pretend for one second that my fight and flight instincts didn’t kick in. The ancient parts of my brain that exist to protect me from danger by fleeing or killing something saw this and screamed a great big NOPE.
But by this point I had like 8 years of other training, to. De-escalation training. Training on keeping a cool head in a scary situation. Training that reminded me that I was responsible for the safety of the other 17 men who called this floor their home.
Training that told me that this man was my responsibility, not my enemy.
In short, the opposite of what many police departments train their officers in. They are trained to view people as hostile, to treat their beat like a war zone. To act immediately. I wont say none of them have de-escalation training, but I will say it’s a bit of a useless add-on when they’re taught to go with their gut feeling of whether or not a situation is dangerous.
Because my gut sure as hell perceived a danger.
Anyways, I didn’t run, and I didn’t attack. I rooted my feet and I asked him what was going on.
That was when I saw that he was weeping. He was terrified.
He had bought a new cooking knife off the tv- he liked cooking, and had been looking at it. But one of the side effects of his meds made him clumsy, and he’d dropped it. He’d sliced open the back of his knee, where there’s a huge vein or artery or something- and was bleeding a LOT.
He was understandably alarmed at the river-like quantity of blood gushing out of him, and had run to the nearest help- me.
In his rush and his fear, he’d just forgotten to put the damn knife down.
The other residents had, thankfully, all stayed in their rooms, because a month before I’d got on several people’s cases for coming out to defend me- with the very best of intentions- during a previous incident. Their motives were good, but de-escalating a situation when other people are ready to throw hands is WAY harder. I’d told them to keep their buts in their rooms unless I actually called for help, and God bless them, every single one of them had done it.
This is the point when I called for help. One of the residents got the first aid kit. One called an ambulance. One gave me the literal shirt off his back because our damn first aid kit didn’t have a tourniquet so we ripped the shirt up to make one.
We helped calm the poor injured guy down, and he got a few stitches, and everybody was proud of how we’d come together to help each other out.
Nobody was hurt beyond that one initial injury. Nobody was traumatized. If anything, the guy who’d been hurt was happier, more engaged with the rest of us, having seen that everyone here would take care of him when he was in need. He hadn’t had much care given to him in his life.
So when you see meme’s of “lol what are those social workers gonna do NOW huh?” please remember that 1) we’ve been out here doing this work ANYWAYS and 2) We’ve been doing it unarmed and level headed, which is better than the cops.
Now, does social work ALSO need reform? Does social work ALSO contain racism and ableism and every other social evil? You bet! Just look at…like anything to do with CPS to look at how these systems break down.
But do not use social workers de-escalation training as some kind of “gotcha” to prove we need armed and militant enforcers on every damn corner. And please don’t let others do it, either.
This is from when Springfield discovered it never lifted prohibition and tried to re-enforce it, so Homer concocted a scheme where he fills fake bowling balls with his own booze and then Moe collects them from behind the scenes at the bowling alley. When Marge found out, she was really just impressed he came up with something so smart and took his side over the cops.
When people say “defund the police is too scary” ask them how scary this graphic is and ask if the funding police get correlates to the conditions in the city or if that same money would be better off reallocated to… Let’s say a fucking library
watched a broadcast of a police “chase” today where the dude drove the speed limit and obeyed all traffic directives except for yielding to cops. they tried to pit maneuver him twice and he just took himself over the median and turned around to follow traffic the other way. the cops ended up spike stripping one of their own SUVs while trying to stop him. when he finally stopped he just sat in his truck, unarmed, with a big tank of nitrous doing whippets for several hours while the cops desperately wracked their pig brains for a tactic that could stop a dude from chilling in his truck.
this was a situation that could have been resolved with a taxi and a tow truck and like, a court summons after running the plates. cops aren’t here to solve situations, they’re here to justify their obscene budgets and military equipment by making every situation an excuse to wage chemical warfare on anyone who doesn’t allow them to define the situation.
they shot pepper bullets into his cab. he sat in his truck. a gaggle of them crept up to the passenger side and tossed in a tear gas canister. he tossed it back out the driver side and kept sitting in his truck. the cop negotiator brought water for the guy but then rather than actually give it to him to demonstrate even an ounce of good faith he threw it on the ground like 10 feet away from the truck as the most obvious bait. they brought in SWAT! fucking SWAT and their shitty SWAT monster truck, for an unarmed dude sitting in his truck. it was only misdemeanors until the cops showed up and made everything about them which made the dude’s every attempt to leave into a felony because it’s happening around a cop.
and all the while the news anchor is like OH YOU DON’T WANT THESE PEACE OFFICERS EXPOSED TO FURTHER RISKS, YOU DON’T WANT THEM CAUGHT IN CROSSFIRE (from who?? other pigs?? they’re the only ones with guns!). HEY COP CORRESPONDENT, WHAT IF YOU USED A FLASHBANG ON THE GUY. god, when even the cop correspondent is like “uhh we’re not doing that” you know you’ve said something sick. i cannot emphasize enough how much of it was just the dude sitting in his truck. the pigs solved this real brainscratcher of a conundrum with more tear gas because that’s the only verb they know.
Now what would happen if a homeless quilt was made by someone who actually cared about homeless people?
Meet former ad designer Willie Baronet.
Baronet is an artist who talks to homeless people and buys their signs from them for $20 a pop, if they’re willing to sell. He uses the signs in art exhibits to educate the privileged and point them to ways they can help, and to humanize homeless people and tell them they matter.
One sign at a time, Baronet makes a statement to help people with $20 in their hand and a voice that rings across the nation saying “I’m here.”
So not only did they take the small, hand-made signs away from homeless people but instead of just tossing them, they kept them. Not only did they keep them as some kind of homeless trophy, they actually went through the time, energy, and effort (funded by tax dollars) to tape them together, pose for a picture, and post it during the holiday season.
This is why people say that there are no good cops. Because there aren’t.
This isn’t the first time they’ve done shit like this either.
this isn’t the usual thing I’d share on my stupid nerd blog, but this is SO important.
I was nearly crushed in a crowd like this once. It was terrifying because you have NO control over the panicking mass of humans around you. you are just at the mercy of all this chaotic force. this is a real thing that can happen very suddenly! it did happen in the news recently!
My situation was, the olympics was happening in my city, I was on my way home from school, and a crowd of people suddenly flooded into the street around me. in seconds it went from, busy-city-street-crowded, to, wtf I can’t even move crowded.
I was so pressed against the backpack of the man in front of me, my feet lifted off the ground a moment. People were climbing lamp posts, signs, bus shelters, trees, everything to get up out of it. it was like the street became an ocean of people, and all the people’s survival instincts were making them dumber. everyone was yelling. no one knew how to solve it.
police, fire fighters and medics saved us by breaking the locks on the inside of the mall we were trapped next to. a huge group flooded into the building, releasing a bit of the pressure on the people outside. I was in that group that got in.
We were trapped in the mall awhile. Because the olympics was on, they had big screens in a few sitting areas of the mall that would normally be showing the games. but now the coverage was focused on this crowd surge. They showed a helicopter shot of the building we were now in, totally surrounded by colorful dots. a solid mass of humans with no space between.
I know someone was partially trampled and needed medics, because I saw that, but i don’t know the statistics on who else was hurt, hopefully no one killed!
I don’t know if these methods can definitely save you, but they might give you a better chance. so watch and share!
Sharing to my own stupid nerd blog for the same reason, this is SO IMPORTANT. Human crushes are one of the most unexpected ways to die. People go out to a show or a sports game, and make it there, but they never come back.
Other strategies include staying away from large obstacles (like fences) that you could get crushed against, and doing your best to stay above the crowd. Try to climb onto something if you can.
And also — not to get nitpicky with deadly tragedies, but they’re called “human crushes,” not “stampedes.” It’s an important difference in description and also in respect. The deaths usually happen because the victims are pinned together in a tight space, they can’t breathe (as in the video) and they suffocate. “Stampede” doesn’t convey what actually happened to those people. The crush that happened in Seoul recently wasn’t because people “stampeded,” it was because they couldn’t move at all and they suffocated. But calling it a “stampede,” you’d think it was the people themselves that ran over each other, like wild animals. It’s disrespectful and untrue.
Horrifyingly, the victims of many human crushes have been blamed for their own deaths, which are usually purely accidental or due to criminal mismanagement from authorities. If you’re in a mental place to read about tragedies and police corruption, check out the Hillsborough Disaster, in which 97 people died due to the incompetence of the police, who then blamed everything on the victims: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster
from the article linked above:
“Many uninjured fans assisted the injured; several attempted CPR and others tore down advertising hoardings to use as stretchers.
Chief Superintendent John Nesbit of South Yorkshire Police later briefed Michael Shersby MP that leaving the rescue to the fans was a deliberate strategy, and is quoted as saying "We let the fans help so that they would not take out their frustration on the police” at a Police Federation conference.“
A screenshot of a tweet by Griffin @GriffinMalone6, followed by a video. The tweet reads “Alex stopped to save a gunshot victim from bleeding out, he was then given Saint Paul Police Chiefs Award for Valor. He then gave this small speech. (Video from @/onsitepublicmedia ig)”
Video ID: Two men stand in front of the Saint Paul Police Department. One is an officer, and the other is Alex, a middle-aged man with a greying beard, wearing a dark hoodie, baseball cap, and glasses.
Officer: It is my great pleasure to present you the ‘Cheif’s Award of Valor’ in recognition for your heroic efforts. Congratulations.
Alex: Thank you.
[Applause is given while the officer presents Alex with a medal, and a short inaudible exchange is shared between them. Alex is taller than the officer so he takes the medal and puts it on himself.]
Officer: Congratulations, would you like the opportunity to say a few words?
Alex: Yeah. Um. I appreciate it. I um. [The man takes off his hoodie to reveal a shirt that says “Smash White Supremacy”] feel like I did what anyone would’ve done with the little training that they have- that I have: a certified firearms instructor. I work in this high school in Minneapolis. I’m a dad and a husband, and a wonderful community leader.
Um. That day, nine of your squad cars raced past us, as I was flagging them down; it said in the letter you sent me. And, that was a potential of eighteen people. Eighteen people could’ve stopped to help preserve life. But eighteen people chose to go to a potential threat. And I- and I recognize the man had a pistol, and we didn’t know what he was doing.
Um. I do appreciate the recognition, um, but I won’t keep this stuff. This [he gestures offscreen] will go to my mom, and this [he gestures to the medal around his neck] will probably go to my son. Cuz, I’m very uncomfortable being here with you guys, I do not rock with the police. But I appreciate you guys giving me the opportunity to say these things, and I just want folks to know that they don’t keep us safe. We keep us safe. Um. [Long pause]. Riots work. Thank you. 'Preciate you.
Officer: Thanks Alex.
Alex: I can take that. [He is handed a picture frame from the officer.]
