Man Calls a Suicide Prevention Hotline, SWAT Team Shows Up and Kills Him
Roy, Utah – A Roy, Utah man, Jose Calzada, 35, placed a call to a suicide prevention hotline at 4:00 a.m. Tuesday morning and threatened to kill himself, seven hour later he was shot and killed by police, according to law enforcement.
The first tragic mistake in this case was made when the Weber County Consolidated Dispatch Center sent officers to the residence rather than some type of crisis response team trained to deal with suicidal individuals.
Often police go into these situations with an ingrained mentality of looking at citizens as threats to the safety of the officers and thus feel empowered and justified to use lethal force as the suicidal person has already threatened to kill someone, themselves.
Gwynn went on to state, “We encourage those having suicidal thoughts or tendencies to contact a physician or expert that can talk them through it. In this particular case he attempted to do that — it’s unfortunate and sad that it failed.”
In every confrontation there seems to be two sides… law enforcement/soldier and THE ENEMY..but this is a not a VIDEO GAME… people DIE !
Filed under: General Problems
Dont know if the family has grounds for a lawsuit. Years ago a family here sued the local police for wrongful death in a similar situation but it was before CIT ( crisis intervention teams) were even thought of. NAMI ( National Alliance for Mental Illness)was one of the groups that helped get these teams started. Every police dept should have trained officers (CIT Officers) who go out on calls to assist in dealing with someone who maybe in a mental illness crisis, suicide or otherwise. Family members should specify when calling for assistance they need a CIT officer. It is sad that did not happen in this case. The person should be taken to the ER and healthcare personnel should be told by family members the patient is in mental crisis or suicidal, thats supposed to initiate a 72 hr hold for a psych eval. However the mental health system is worse than our chronic pain management system. If the person is an adult, it is so difficult to get them the treatment you know they need and HIPPA is a HUGE barrier. I speak from experience, I have been lucky, but I attend family support thru NAMI and I hear the horror stories of another broken system.
Involuntary mental health hold is normally referred to as a 5150… if you call the police and declare that there is someone that is going to here themselves or others and declaring a 5150
Let me see if I can get this straight. A man is going to commit suicide. Nothing is said about the guy being a threat to others. But, the cops shoot and kill him. Is there something wrong with this picture? What has happened to law enforcement in this country? When they are called, they seemed to automatically see a situation as confrontational.