[DemolitionRed]

Maru thank you for such detailed descriptions. I think my friend must live on the nicer side of town in Baltimore. She teaches acting at a university and her husband is a professor of music at the same uni.

When you convert dollars to pounds, the house prices, even in expensive areas of the U.S seem very cheap but then I live in London where a mouse hole can easily set you back a £million. What is a regular monthly salary for unskilled workers? In the UK an unskilled basic rate in the UK is around £1,300 a month (abt $1700) before tax and NI

If you want a short answer you should ask, “what’s right about the North Sea” Its cold, unpredictable and often hazardous and the swell tends to get real big!

Hi Geistkrieger,
I think the UK must have followed the U.S. to the letter when it came to closing down facilities for the mentally ill and throwing people out on the streets under the very broken umbrella called ‘care in the community’. Our police and ambulance services are ill equipped in how to communicate or deal with so many different types of mental illness.

I know quite a lot about autism and understand how alarmed people can become when they are getting stared at or being approached by a stranger with no spatial awareness. From what you’ve described it sounds like you are very knowledgeable about this condition. Its easy to understand why they frighten people and if handled incorrectly, how things can get out of control very quickly. Like you say though, why would a cop presume mental illness when he sees someone behaving in an agitated way. The difference between here and certain states in the U.S. is, the probability of that person having a gun is as unlikely as my dog ever catching a squirrel; there is though, a high probability of him having a concealed knife.

I watched the video and the one thing that really alarmed me was his mother walking out the door and as she passed the cops she say’s “bipolar schizo” WHAT THE HELL!! She’d just warned these cops that he was unstable but instead of waiting with him and making sure she took that screwdriver out of his hand, she abandons him. She then starts screaming at him which was bound to make the cops nervous. As for him getting shot, (poor guy, he was probably just repairing a kitchen cupboard!) to me, a Brit, this feels really disturbing but again I’ll say, we don’t have guns and so if someone was holding a screwdriver the cops won’t shoot them. Are police trained in none lethal use of a firearm?

I couldn’t make the second video work but the third one was very good. There’s nothing like being put on the spot!

I totally get what you are saying regarding more blacks getting shot in primarily black cities. I hadn’t thought of that.

Militarizing police is something that gives me nightmares. It sprung from that bomb going off in Brussels where it filmed a mask task force leading people in and out of the station. A few weeks later it showed the streets of Brussels being watched over by police who looked like masked Navy seals. Their body armor could have been out of Star Wars and they looked so intimidating I thought, have I just witnessing the birth of a new type of police force?

I appreciate that you need the best protection available but when it comes to wearing masks and carrying something that resembles a Kalashnikov, the police need to keep in mind that this is also a very intimidating uniform to people with no interest in crime. I’m not a criminal and I like to think I can approach a police officer if I need help but no way would I approach anyone who looked like that.

Of course we never get the good stories…sad isn’t it, but sounds like your unit are being pro-active about mental illness and getting out there in the community... that’s great to hear.

A very insightful view from both of you about a part of the U.S. I know little about. Thank you.