from anonaminita:
This article from the Mental Health Association of Portland is great … until the end when they talk about what a future mayor should look like. A little more anti-authoritarian effort and it’d have gotten two black stars. Let’s not focus on a new slavemaster as this is the problem of slavery we are talking about. Mayors cannot dismantle systems they work for. They are hired to build these up not break them apart and not to create destructive space for new ways of life. Cops function on the daily for the non-stop harassment and oppression of people who are already down-and-out and end up in tricky officer-involved situations without solidarity from the outside (that’s everyone else in society … us alienated people without enough history, solidarity, and common action.) People in situations like Brad Morgan’s are sick antelope, sitting there as prey for the police and other goons who will nonchalantly take them out. I see many solutions to the problem, none of them are mutually exclusive, and some are developing here in Portland with groups like the Rosehip Collective and people doing conflict mediation and intervention. But of many possible and empowering solutions, future mayors are not one. Fuck all the future mayors, really, what are they going to do? Cops will be cops. Mayors will be mayors. The media is their mirror-mirror on the wall. Fuck it all.
For solidarity!
##### ##### ##### ##### ##### #####
via Mental Health Association of Portland. Feb 7, 2012:
The MHAP response to The Oregonian’s 2/1 editorial, ‘Suicide by cop is a no-win situation’
author: Jenny Westberg, of the Mental Health Association of Portland
e-mail: info@mentalhealthportland.org
The Oregonian has, so far, declined to publish this community response from the Mental Health Association of Portland to their unsigned editorial, ‘Suicide by cop is a no-win situation for police,’ published on February 1, 2012.
In their Feb. 1 apologia for the Portland Police Bureau, The Oregonian slaps a thick coat of whitewash on yet another tragic death. Brad Morgan, 21, called for help and received fear, force and death. He died Jan. 25 of a single gunshot, fired by Officer David Scott or Sgt. John Holbrook (we do not yet know which).
Since 1980, at least 232 people have been shot, shot at, or killed by Portland-area police. Many, like me, had mental illness. If this happened in any other group in society, there would be rioting in the streets. But we are unwelcome in life, easily forgotten in death.
The Oregonian says: “What we know about suicides is that they can be prevented, but people have to act fast….Had the officers not engaged with Morgan, they could have been criticized for sitting back and doing nothing while he killed himself.”
Actually, had the officers not engaged with Morgan, he might be alive. He might have been hospitalized, and perhaps recovered. Or not. We will never know. His life was ended, all hope of recovery erased.
Again: “Had the officers not engaged with Morgan, they could have been criticized…”
Is being criticized the real threat? We won’t know that either, because instead of risking it, officers chose to shoot.
And again: “Had the officers not engaged with Morgan…[he might have] killed himself.”
But he was killed, by police. He’s now as dead as he would be had he killed himself. So we’re left with this question: When a person is contemplating suicide, why is it somehow preferable he die by police bullet than by his own hand?
Either way his life ends forever. But one way — death by police — is guaranteed to end in irrevocable tragedy. The other way — police officers not lethally “engaging,” not leaping to “act fast,” and certainly not acting on the ridiculous notion that you protect a person’s life, or cure his suicidality, by killing him — allows the possibility of life, and the chance of getting well.
In every one of these cases, the officers say they felt threatened. Yet suicidal people rarely harm anyone but themselves. Why the perceived threat?
One reason may be that people with mental illness are quite aware of what’s going on. We have watched and taken note over the past several years as police devolved into willing agents of our darkest hour. For suicidal persons, police are now as dangerous as keeping a loaded firearm.
For many of us, suicidal thoughts are relentless and compelling, subsiding only to return again, in a terrifyingly predictable cycle with no visible end. Treatment works for some, not all. The Oregonian may have their theories, but here is what I know: When a period of despair passes, even for a while, I’m glad to experience it — and lately, I’m also glad police were not there, adding firepower to unreasoned impulse, taking a bad decision and making it my last.
To say, “That person wanted to be shot, so police had no other choice. It was suicide by cop,” devalues our lives, trivializes our pain, and guarantees more killings. Let’s call it what it is: These deaths are homicides by cop.
It is not a crime to be sad, fearful, depressed, or even suicidal. It is not a crime to be crazy. But we are being executed for our craziness — no trial, no judge, no jury, just immediate capital punishment.
The first steps to change belong to the mayor, who in Portland typically serves as police commissioner. Here’s what a future mayor should sound like:
“Our police are not a backstop for ineffective, financially starved county and state programs for mental and addictions health. My administration will hold politicians, bureaucrats and agencies accountable.
“I will apply political pressure to counties to provide the mental and addiction health services they’re responsible for, and paid to provide. This will begin to reduce the criminalization of mental illness, and enable us to recoup its costs to our city.
“I will make getting new and more money for safety net services my top legislative priority.
“I will reduce contact between persons with active mental illness or addiction and the police by directing 9-1-1 operators to divert mental health and suicide calls away from armed police response. These calls will go the county crisis line, or medical transport to a hospital or clinic. However, since we cannot entirely eliminate contact between officers and persons with mental illness, I will continue a robust program of training for patrol officers in all aspects of crisis management.”
We may someday have a mayor who talks like that.
For now, we need police who will act sanely and rationally. It should not have to be said, but killing us for having suicidal impulses is not rational, it’s not sane, it’s not even close — and it has to stop. We insist on our right not to be shot by police before we find recovery.
GREY COAST ANARCHIST NEWS 