Posted on 12/03/2014 8:55:50 PM PST by Altariel
Midland, TX — Rosendo Gino Rodriquez, 49, was shot dead in an altercation Monday while Midland Police were conducting a routine welfare check.
The Midland County mental health unit was conducting a regular welfare check at a home on the 2700 block of Washington Street, when things went sour. According to the Midland police, Rodriquez became “aggressive” during the welfare check.
The term aggressive is used loosely by the MPD, as they claim he acted out said “aggression” by running away from them, back into his house, and barricading himself in a room.
The Free Thought Project would like to clarify the definition of aggressive for the MPD: ready or likely to attack or confront; characterized by or resulting from aggression.
A person running in their house and locking themselves in a room is hardly an act of aggression. However, the MPD treated it as such and responded with its SWAT team, BearCat armored vehicle and bomb squad robot with a camera to gain a look inside the home, as well as a DPS helicopter.
Police claimed that after Rodriquez went inside, they may have heard gunshots. However no gun was found, nor evidence of any shots.
Family members say their father had not been on medication. Monday’s welfare check was intended to talk the man into taking his medication.
Rodriquez, whose family has been trying to get him help, was likely distraught by this heavy onslaught of police presence and became quite fearful, locking himself in his bathroom with a machete.
City spokeswoman, Sara Bustilloz said police attempted to use “many methods” including a negotiator to make contact with Rodriquez and end the situation without incident. However, the “many methods” were simply rubber bullets which proved to be ineffective, thus leading to the incompetent officers switching to real bullets.
“This is not how we want these situations to end,” Bustilloz said. “We want them to end without incident, and we do everything in our power to make sure we can do it that way first.”
Officers eventually confronted the tormented man in his bathroom, where they found Rodriquez armed with a machete. After the heavily armed men in body armor, who apparently all forgot their tasers that day, “feared for their lives,” they opened fire on the man, killing him.
According to CBS 7, per normal protocol, an external investigation into the officer-involved shooting will be completed by the Texas Rangers, and two officers involved in the altercation, who are identified as Sgt. Mitch Russell and Officer Sean Sharp, have been placed on administrative leave pending the completion of an investigation.
This incident is but another tragic example of the level police incompetence when dealing with the mentally ill.
A recent report out of California showed that the overwhelming majority of police have not completed state certification that focuses on the training in dealing with mental illness, suicide behavior, and drug use; this lack of training is evident, nationwide.
Instead of compassion and patience, which should be used in dealing with mentally unstable people, police most often resort to violent escalation.
The incompetence and negligence is rife throughout all levels of law enforcement which is why these deadly actions on behalf of the MPD will likely be ruled “justified.”
It’s not like police departments don’t know that this training exists, the information is out there. We’re simply witnessing callous disregard for the the preservation of life.
In a two-part study, researchers looked at use of the crisis intervention team, or CIT, model, a 40-hour program to train police to respond to those with mental health issues. They interviewed 586 officers, 251 of whom had received CIT training, and reviewed more than 1,000 police encounters with individuals believed to have behavioral disorders.
Officers who participated in CIT training were more knowledgeable about mental health issues, treatments and de-escalation skills, according to findings published in the April issue of the journal Psychiatric Services.
What’s more, when looking at emergency responses, incidents involving officers with CIT training were more likely to result in transport to mental health services and less likely to culminate in arrest. Researchers found that officers who had participated in training were also much more likely to indicate that the highest level of force used in their emergency response was verbal engagement or negotiation.
With the increased prevalence in autism and police aggression in general, something must be done before anymore innocent lives are taken.
I can tell you one worse. In many states your spouse has a mental breakdown OR a medication reaction the doctor labels as mental illness YOU the spouse have no legal say in the treatment. You can not sign you have no input unless you have a written medical POA. The attending doctors will call the state in and the state decides. This is first hand information not hearsay. My wife had an adverse reaction to antidepressants causing a Serotonin Migration to her brain with symptoms similar to LSD or acute psychosis.
I wanted blood work done and an MRI or CT of her brain. The doctors six to be exact said no. I had no say. I knew something other than mental illness was going on and I proved them right but it took nearly five days. I did what the doctors didn't do I looked up the meds for adverse reactions.
I used to work in a county contracted nursing home in the maintenance dept. The nursing home had about 50 persons from the enlightened exodus from a mental hospital they had been in. One we called Pain and Agony. Give him string and he would tie it around his private and try to hang it. These persons could not function in any environment and needed round the clock watching. Not locked up as such but watched.
I can say this much for certain. In the early 1970's when I was an early teen I could safely walk downtown at night. By 1976 it had changed. Persons were being put out on the street creating significant homeless issues that lead to crime like breaking into vehicles. About that same time my dad began to carry where he worked because he had to park under an interstate bridge and got off at midnight. Today Knoxville, Tennessee is a homeless Mecca known throughout the eastern states. You can look at the sheriffs arrest logs and many are homeless drunk and disorderliness. IOW self medicating with alcohol. It likely has the largest homeless shelter in the southeast. Lots of Administrative wages to be earned running a NPO shelter.
In this article the mans family requested he be checked on. Right now in most states that duty falls upon the LEO's. LEO's are not mental health professionals. A trained team of staff in a mental facility including Orderlies can usually subdue a patient if needed with minimal risk to all but they have Meds they can administer ASAP that work ASAP. Cops Don't. Then again I saw a 4'10" almost 80 year old woman where I used to work take on the entire floor staff of about six.
Sometimes it was funny. One woman on third floor had her own private paid phone. She called 911 and said there was people having a party in her room and a man outside her window dancing naked. The cops showed up because they have too and asked where the patient was. We said third floor and they laughed and told us what was going on. In the mean time she had barricaded herself in the room with the bed LOL.
Under no circumstances I know of do paramedics respond or transport mental patients. LEO's are used to transport usually a reserve officer or jailer. Thus the family if they thought he needed help would have to call the Cops. It stinks but that is the reality of it.
People are not realizing that Mental Health Care Laws & Regulations are not the same as Medical ones. Family has little or no say.
Well, it makes sense that the police would be worried, especially when everything is put into that perspective.
With all of the additional details given on this thread now, I’d say this particular case is a tough one to call.
It's getting very confusing.
You totally missed my point. The law is totally irrelevant. I have a choice of action. Call the cops or don’t call the cops. I would choose to deal with it myself, instead of calling the cops.
Just because the law is ignorant, doesn’t mean I have to be.
IF your family member breaks a leg or neck, needs a heart transplant, has a stroke, you can sign permission for treatment even surgery. The laws of treatment for mental illness are not the same. I've told you plainly how it works. That doesn't mean I agree with it I'm just telling you the legal facts.
The family knew the man, they likely knew what it would take to get him help and took the only legal and allowed remedy available to them to get him needed help.
So when does family finally get input? When at the hospital the state or county mental health crisis team shows up. They will probably listen to you. No one else will. Again I do not agree with this as a protocol I'm just saying how it is.
So who should respond then? IMO a team of medical staff of at least a Nurse and two orderlies from a mental hospital who have the training, skills, experience, and MEDICATIONS ON THEIR PERSON to if needed safely get the person to needed help. That was the old system and it worked.
Thank liberal lawmakers, activist judges, and patients rights lawyers, for getting it put off on the Cops and the government calling the shots. Many counties including my own rural one the deputies likely take at least one person a day to a mental facility. In most cases it all goes OK. It is when the patient become combative all hell breaks loose. You don't hear about the thousands of routine transports done daily each day by law enforcement that are successful. Why a cop? Because the patient is handcuffed and placed in the back seat where they can not hurt anyone. Again the paramedics in most places do not transport mental health patients.
ONLY IF THE PATIENT IS WILLING & MENTALLY CAPABLE TO SIGN FOR THEMSELVES PERMISSION FOR TREATMENT CAN YOU TAKE THEM IN AND GET THEM HELP ON YOUR OWN. If not you are S.O.L. Only LEO can take over.
Look dude, I have had some experience in such situations with relatives. They all said no initially, but we achieved what needed to be done without calling the cops.
I do have power of attorney for people in my immediate family, because that is the logical, smart, and well prepared thing to do.
The cops can’t do anything that the family can’t, cops are more likely to shoot the person, and cops are not likely to be as persuasive as a trusted family member.
I do agree that using medical personnel trained to deal with such individuals is better than the current system.
Calling the cops turns a bad situation into a potentially deadly situation. I wouldn’t do it. Ymmv.
I called our daughters and when I went back in she was unconscious in an exam room curtains close, guard outside and still in her wheelchair. I found her and said get help in here STAT. A nurse came in and said OMG. The doctor walks in and I yelled do something mental illness doesn't cause this. He said NO. I said you Stupid ****. My dad and I loaded her up in the van and took off for hospital ER number 2. She arrive unresponsive and unconscious. They got her conscious and asked me what happened. I told them and again they said Transfer. I made my concerns known and they were dismissed. Mobile Crisis showed up after 12 hours and I talked to them. They said No to the transfer after I explained her history.
In five days time no blood work got done no scans were done. But they took her off all meds but but gave her Ativan. In about three days she was normal. In walks a shrink we had never seen before. He said increase the Zoloft. Next day at noon in walks nurses and gives her the pill. At 1:00 an hour later she was back where she was hallucinating again. Even though a quad she has fair arm and hand movement. She had to be restrained to the bed to prevent beating herself black and blue.
I went home to get some sleep and my dad stayed. I stopped off at the hospital chapel and said some prayers then went home. I got on line and looked up Zoloft +Trazodone +Adverse reactions that is how I found out what was wrong it was Serotonin Syndrome.
The hospital knew they had screwed up bad and then did a MRI and found two brain bleeders. One an old one from years past and a second one caused by Serotonin Syndrome. The Mental Health Protocols and Laws Stink that is the problem at hand. The media never addresses this now do they? No but they sure as hell show up for pictures when things go wrong with the Cops are called on to do mental health care.
She still has partial amnesia of the event and can't remember a few events in our life.
I've signed for several surgeries for her. I've signed her name as often as I sign my own with no POA required. But if she has another such episode {very unlikely as the cause was discovered} the laws forbid my say.
Maybe you need to read 68
Oh yea the reason for the meds. Simple basic clinical depression and PTSD. She would not hurt anyone. Oh and our Primary Care Doctor thanks to hospital Rules never once received notification or had input in the care given.
Oh, Bravo Sierra.
I do not care if he was sane or mentally ill, white black, brown or tattooed.
When someone attacks armed officers with a machette, they are most likely going to be shot...and for good reason.
Many times the ones who blame the COPs will also scream bloody murder that mental patients are being kept against their will in some case and violating their rights.
Where are the wounds from the attacks? Pictures?
What’s that? The officers *found him in the bathroom, allegedly holding machete* The only confirmed wounds from a weapon are the bullet wounds in his corpse.
Huh. Fancy that.
You know, if one party wasn’t wearing government costumes, one would conclude that they attacked him. But of course we know that wearing a government costume protects one from such accusations.
She should have learned a lesson.
I believe you are right about how that policy changed society around 1976. I was just a kid then, but I was around to see it all happen. Indeed, many of the homeless are people suffering from mental illness. Or sometimes a tragedy sends an otherwise mentally healthy person off the deep end, and that person checks out, just starts living on the street.
Still, I can understand both sides of the argument:
(1) the side that wants to ensure loved ones are given the best care, and
(2) the side that wants to ensure that people who are no danger to themselves or others are not institutionalized against their wishes.
In high school, one of the teens who was institutionalized briefly told of how an adult female patient at the mental hospital tried to assault him while he was there. He certainly wasn’t mentally ill. He probably was put there because his family thought he might be depressed or he was using drugs. There’s a fine line sometimes between what society deems sanity and what society deems insanity.
OTOH, if all you’re asking for is a CT scan or an MRI for a loved one who is suffering, that’s a different story. My family’s experience was different: Cancer had spread to my father’s liver, which threw him into a terrible mental state one day. By the time he reached the ER, the nurses had to strap him down because he was fighting them. It didn’t matter that he didn’t want to be strapped down; it was obvious that something was wrong, and he needed help, whether he wanted the help or not at that point. (He did recover with no memory of what had happened, although he passed on a few weeks later.)
I agree that a few orderlies armed with the right medicine would be the better choice. Maybe these stories will prompt a return to that tactic.
Sorry, I just read your post # 68 now with the additional information. I’m glad to hear of how you were able to find out what was really happening and make sure that your wife was given the right care. Hospitals and staff make mistakes sometimes. How fortunate are those of us with family to act as our advocates, as you did for your wife. God bless!
She should have learned a lesson.
Sorry, I don’t get what you mean. Is that sarcasm? Yes, I’m sure the widow learned a lesson. That’s why she was at the task force meeting, to convey her hard-earned lesson: Don’t call the po-po in this area because they’ll kill you. Great lesson.
I've been under care of mental health professionals myself. I have been diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder and had PTSD. The G.A.D. was a symptom of a neurological issue I was born with where the Inner Ears and Sensory Processing System for auditory and visual sensory processing is damaged.
The medical protocol for G.A.D. is antidepressants. That's fine and dandy if your issue is a need for it. For persons like me it simply overtaxed my already damaged system and would cause crashes. The doctors meaning Psychiatrist were insistent I take their antidepressant flavor of the month. Reality was only Xanax was helping me. They didn't want to give it too me because it is the Hollywood choice of drugs to take. I get no buzz, no utopia, no chill, from it rather I'm at least able to function enough to care for my wife and myself at home. I became disabled in 1994 at the old age of about 37.
I made the connection of the G.A.D. to my Inner Ear and vision issues thanks to a book I found linking Anxiety to Vestibular Disorders. Convincing a Shrink that this was the problem took several doctors before I found one who understood it and agreed to using the benzodiazepines rather than antidepressants.
What happened to my wife could have easily happened to me. Actually one doctor put me on Paxil. About two weeks into taking it my bladder stopped working. At first I thought well it's my nerves. Then I sensed I was fixing to go into Dysreflexia a condition of shock and got to an ER and got cathed. The condition is common to spinal cord patients is how I knew about it and what was happening to me. But it can happen to anyone. I had to keep a Foley in me until the medication left my body two weeks later. Not once was I warned the medication could cause that in men. Other drugs had bad results including about five more. Headaches and stomach aches when taking antidepressants is a sign hey the doctors needs to rethink things. Most are clueless. Many doctors writing scripts for antidepressants never heard of Serotonin Syndrome or hadn't 12 years ago anyway when it hit my wife.
The PTSD for me to be rid of it took five years of therapy. Two of it one on one and three in group. In period of a few years I lost my first wife to a massive heart attack when she was 23. I met someone else and we had just gotten serious and she went quadriplegic in a few hours time on a date. She nearly died as I was taking her to the ER with two scared kids in the car. She had a six month hospital stay three of that in spinal rehab. In the third month of it we married. Over the next few years she had several close calls health wise and our daughter was in a serious car wreck that when I arrived on scene thought she was dead because they were covering her body. She was pinned in the wreck and they had to cover her to cut her out. She was bed-fast at home for a couple of months.
A couple years later while still dealing with the legal hounding {other guys fault BTW} of debt collectors I was in a wreck where a woman rear ended my 78 K-5. Her Honda Accordion was totaled. In the front seat in a car seat was a baby. I got out to check for injuries and the baby I thought was dead but slept through the whole thing.
The sum total triggered the onset of the extreme sound sensitivities that trigger seizures in my upper Torso. My brain could only juggle so many things and something had to give. I never had to spend a day hospitalized for it. I was a threat to no one and had no desired to harm anybody.
After a couple of years when I finally got the Xanax in the correct consistent level in the bloodstream so I could function somewhat. IOW I needed my sensory system toned way down to a level my brain and Vestibular System could process without triggering anxiety. Most Shrinks still do not recognize Vestibular Disorders as a cause of Anxiety Disorder. Go tell most doctors that you take Xanax and are a regular user and they will tell you it won't work. For me it is the safest drug I can take.
Mental Health has a lot of catching up to do in recent research and so do the current laws on the books. Most persons with mental illness the cops interact with are chronic or repeat needs patients. For them there has to be a better way. Family should have enough legal standing to have someone in obvious need admitted involuntarily for 72 hours observation without it requiring an act of court or state. After that point the examination and opinion of two qualified doctors should suffice if needed to keep them there.
Appoint a patient advocate {Guardian Ad Liten} similar to what foster kids get to keep it honest but changes need to come so families are not at the mercy of LEO and the courts for getting someone help..
Your next question is what I meant. Unless you want a family member to get killed or go to jail, do not call the police. At one point in time, the police would when called mediate a dispute, exert a calming influence, offer counseling to a misbehaving child. Taking someone’s life or putting someone in jail was a last resort. However, this has went the way of the dodo bird. The function of the police is now to control and arrest. The police are no longer your friend. I taught my children that the police were their friend[s]. Do not be afraid of them. I would not do that in today’s climate.
So a mentally ill man, who was already having a problem, sees his house surrounded by a SWAT team with armor and air support and he gets scared and lashes out. Wow, who could have seen that coming.
I think even a healthy person under similar circumstances would have been scared to death.
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