Boy, as yet unidentified, is third child killed by San Bernardino law enforcement in less than two years and second in under a month
Southern California sheriff’s deputies shot and killed a 17-year-old boy with mental health issues after he armed himself with a knife and locked himself inside a bathroom at a home, authorities said on Wednesday.
The teen was being transferred from a hospital, where he had been treated after cutting himself, to a mental health facility when he escaped on Tuesday, the San Bernardino county sheriff, Shannon Dicus, said.
The boy, a foster youth who lived in Hesperia, later showed up at a home in Victorville, about 90 miles (145km) east of Los Angeles, where his sisters live in foster care, Dicus said. Someone at the home called deputies to come arrest him, Dicus added, because he had caused trouble there before.
The teen, who had a knife, locked himself in a bathroom, and deputies tried to get him to come out for about a half-hour, according to the sheriff. But when the boy threatened to harm himself, deputies kicked down the door and tried to apprehend him, Dicus said.
My ex worked for a county mental health crisis agency and this is how it worked. If something sounded dangerous they’d call the police out, but a trained psychologist would be the one engaging with the patient. She’d tell me stories of how she went into a suicidal guy’s house armed with a clipboard while he had a gun on the table.
Nobody she dealt with was killed. Though one guy who lived in the park had the cops take his dog and the dog was put to sleep.
It’s good to know that sometimes it’s done the right way. We need to make it standard operating procedure. It would have saved this kid’s life.
These exist in a lot of places, and I think it would be good if 911 operators were told to route mental health issues to them rather than to the police. They can then call in police if they think they’ll need them.
Then again, the time she got the suicidal guy to go to treatment the cops waited outside because they said it was too dangerous. So maybe they wouldn’t be that helpful after all.
Better off that way. They probably would have shot him otherwise.