Less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door, police shot Yong Yang in his parents’ Koreatown home while he was holding a knife during a bipolar episode.
Parents in Los Angeles’ Koreatown called for mental health help in the middle of their son’s bipolar episode this month. Clinical personnel showed up — and so did police shortly after.
Police fatally shot Yong Yang, 40, who had a knife in his hand, less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door to his parents’ apartment where he had locked himself in, newly released bodycam video shows.
Now the parents of Yang, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder around 15 years ago, have told NBC News exclusively that they are disputing part of the account captured on bodycam, in which police recount a clinician’s saying Yang was violent before the shooting on May 2.
Got a problem?
Call the cops.
Now you’ve got two problems!
Just to be clear, the family didn’t call the police. The mobile response team did, which is typically done when there’s a weapon.
Ok, that’s fine. We’d need more details about what actually transpired and what the support team told the cops.
But it sure seems like in a situation where the support team calls them, it should be with the understanding that they’re there for backup, not to barge in and fire.
But looking at the report, that’s what happened.
Also:
On May 2, 2024, at 10:58 a.m., Olympic Division uniformed officers responded to a radio call at an apartment in the 400 block of South Gramercy Place to assist the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (DMH) who were attempting to place an individual, later identified as 40-year-old Yong Yang into custody.
Why was the Department of Mental Health “attempting to place him into custody”? They were trying to detain him and take him from the premises, under the law…which sounds an awful lot like an arrest with a different set of paperwork.
So basically these were just cops without guns…who went ahead and called the cops with the guns anyway.
I said it another comment but where was the emergency here? Why did they need to get him into custody immediately? He could not hurt anyone but themselves locked in an apartment alone. He was showing aggression when people tried to enter, but could not hurt them if they stayed out.
Why did they enter and give him someone to hurt? Seeing as how all that was going to do was give them justification to hurt him.
The police also tried to calm him down by whining about how “hard” their job is and tried to bitch about him “making a scene”. They really have zero empathy and probably aren’t even capable of understanding how the entire outcome was their fault. The definition of “why did you make me abuse you?”.
1: They want to hurt themselves or others.
2: They said how they’ll do it.
3: They said they’ll be doing it NOW or at a definitive time.
If these 3 things aren’t answered with any definitive answers, they’ll leave you alone.
You can say who you’ll kill, you can say how, but if you don’t say you plan to do it NOW or on May 23rd, you’re going to stay at home unless you have insurance and plan to go somewhere voluntarily.
=
Use this life hack to never have to deal with police and kill yourself if you want to as long as you’ve exhausted all real options. Pro-Choice all the way. Ain’t nobody but you gets a say on whether you want to live or not.
Set time? Set how? No person? No 51.15.
Don’t know when? Set how. Set kys. No 51.15
Say it’s tomorrow? Don’t know how. Say you’ll kys. Maybe 51.15, just don’t convince them differently.
E: Forgot the obvious. Don’t threaten anyone while you have a weapon in your possession. No, the police can no longer leave you alone. They are not allowed to just let you kill yourself without being sued into oblivion. Yes, if you threaten them with a weapon at close distance, they will kill you. No, it doesn’t matter if you’re mentally unwell, don’t threaten people with lethal weapons. Being unwell doesn’t give you carte blanche to PHYSICALLY threaten and/or hurt people.
Something something, I’d rather be alone with a bear.
(Warning, some graphic imagery)
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You’re right; the cops cured his bipolar disorder /s
Cured it like you’d cure a ham.
The /s is the most important 2 characters in your reply.
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Epic
Devil’s advocate’s advocate: Or they’ve multiplied…
I honestly don’t know what the hell you’re supposed to do in America if a loved one has a psychotic episode and threatens you, because calling the cops for help could be a death sentence for them, but not getting help could be a death sentence for you. Maybe make some sort of plan with neighbors in case something happens? But then you get the neighbors all worried that they’re living next to someone who could get dangerously psychotic. I’m not talking about what should be done if things were more ideal, I’m talking about what people with such loved ones should do if it happens today, May 22, 2024. Because it sounds like someone has a good chance of dying no matter what.
You just have to fucking deal with it yourself basically, our social safety net is a bad joke. If you’re a minority, neurodivergent, queer, or anything else they decide they don’t like, you have a much higher likelihood of literally being murdered by the people who are supposed to help and protect society.
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Power and control. To protect and serve the ruling class interests.
Police protect and serve capital and capital only.
Kill Fido
Fido ~ Fidon’t
I have a family member who had a wellness check called in for her and the cops came in and immediately beat her ass. Don’t let these fuckers into your house. Ever.
Never call a wellness check on someone if you aren’t cool with them being killed.
Wellness checks are notorious for being lethal, it’s absurd.
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Like, to a lot of people actually.
It sounds like what it is, Flying. Not a tasty pill to swallow but these are the dues of the division modern society has allowed.
No more Village raising the children. No more respected elders, trusted craft people, or neighborly bonds.
For the illusion of connection and its subsequent gamification and for the enrichment of those who say what we want to hear, these are the dues to be paid.
We live and die alone, bemoaning a loss of bonds that could be mended at any time; let he who is lonely lay their cynicism down first.
No, I don’t believe it’s that easy (and recognize the risks of being first) but it probably is that simple. No clue how the message is amplified back through time in a manner that gets enough likes though.
Such an insightful comment. /Gen
Sometimes, others share their opinions and lived-in experience not to give you insight, but because to speak is to human. Sonder on that, whatever your generation.
I am aware the oldest writing is of a merchant swindling. I am aware of the atrocities respected elders have carried out against the Village children, all villages.
I am not here to insight you; use your own faculties for that.
I am aware the oldest writing is of a merchant swindling.
You are an arrogant fool. Blah blah blah. BTW the oldest written text is probably the Code of Ur-Nammu. It’s not the Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir, as I assume you’re comment referred to.
I was being genuine. That’s what “/gen” means.
I am genuinely sorry I was genuinely a reactionary idiot earlier, but thank you for teaching me a new one!
We had to ride out a number of suicidal episodes and drug overdoses over COVID. I have PTSD from childhood abuse that flared up during the lockdown and PTSD from previous encounters with the police (I was tased and arrested during a welfare check about a decade ago).
Thankfully my gf is good at holding space but it was still very stressful for both of us. And there were a number of times I would have gone to the hospital if I had any faith in the system.
they asked me and others to leave the house when i called (active suicidality and psychosis). i told them we would not, that i was sitting next to him on the floor and two minors were in their rooms nearby. i hoped they would be less likely to do something stupid when they knew there were three other people here and one actively witnessing and close to him.
i think it ensured they were more thoughtful entering my home, and he was calmer when they entered because i remained.
fortunately, i had calmed him enough and taken the weapon that this was even a possibility. i suspect it doesn’t hurt that we’re white.
You’ve got to get really fucking friendly with the cops and you’ve just gotta hope. You want to take your child to the local precinct office and introduce them and their disability to officers in a calm setting and discuss how to deesclate situations… especially if you can talk clearly on certain trigger scenarios and double especially if your child can voice these things himself. Then you’ve got to hope they create a file on your child and hope they fucking remember this shit if your child goes off.
Written by the step parent to a child with bipolar disorder and autism - though we’re in Canada things are extremely similar wrt policing culture up here.
You want to take your child to the local precinct office and introduce them and their disability to officers in a calm setting
This might work in a smaller town, but this family was in LA. I’ve never lived there, but I have lived in NYC and I doubt anyone in the precinct would care. They would just file some paperwork and move on to the next thing. There’s probably less than a 50/50 shot that the paperwork would be communicated to any officer in a crisis. And back when I lived there in the stone age, that chance would have been zero.
Maybe if your precinct does community policing, it would be beneficial to introduce yourself to any officers you know are local, but that assignment can change on a whim.
Big cities are composed of smaller divisions covered by local precincts - there’s still luck involved here but you’re really misunderstanding how policing works.
Some places have mobile response teams for mental health issues. Florida has a few programs being piloted right now. They have direct numbers. So, the police are not necessarily involved in reported events.
And that’s great, but mentally ill people are everywhere, not just in the places in Florida with pilot programs. There are many ideas with how to deal with this problem in the future. Meanwhile, cops are killing mentally ill people today.
I’m not disagreeing. My comment was solution focused. Some areas have teams set up to help. Not everyone knows about them or even to look for them. So, I was providing information that might lead people to look around for programs that might help.
I mean if you need help, you can always ask a neighbour for help. Would be useful if everyone had a mancatcher pole as well, as messed up as the implications of everyone in society having a mancatcher is.
I can’t speak for anyone else, and I am not in this situation myself, thankfully, but I wouldn’t know my neighbors well enough to ask them, sad as that is.
I’m in no better spot, but this is the crux of the problem, isn’t it - too many of us don’t have a strongly-enough bound local community to get assistance with stuff like this without involving the cops.
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I mean, every criticism you level at the parents sounds like people worried that if they call police its going to go badly.
I have a severely autistic son. There is literally no circumstance where I would call the police for any event involving him. Unless there is a dead body on the floor, they are not getting a call.
I’m in a weird dichotomy where I need to be sure he knows to trust police in case somehow he’s alone and needs help one day, while at the same time realizing that if he gets to that point he’s probably fucked, and praying there is never, ever a time where he interacts with police without my wife or I between him and them. I can’t say “look for a fireman” or “look for an ambulance” because there isn’t always one of them around. But you never have to wait too long to see a cop.
Hopefully if that ever happens, he’ll stumble across one of the less trigger-happy ones.
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I will always advocate that a big area where police could improve their standing with the communities they serve is to always strive toward better, non-lethal handling of situations where the circumstances are appropriate; however, handling individuals with behavioral / mental disabilities isn’t simple…
Nearly every single time I have seen someone make this particular excuse for police, a nurse or other staff from a healthcare facility will crop up to point out that they do it all day every day without having to kill people.
true, but in inpatient settings they have tools at their disposal and a context supporting safety that you lack. they have - locked doors, lots of people who can be summoned, people trained to restrain, injectable medication. probably other stuff i’m not thinking about. there’s likely also an increased understanding of that person’s issues, level of risk, and current medication and sobriety. even several hours of observation plus a secure environment gives staffers an advantage police lack.
so i work in mental health. it is very likely that i will have to call police on a client at some point. i have training that works well in some circumstances, but there are limits. i have, in fact, been one of the people here on lemmy that has pointed out people working with others with mental illness and disability manage things without guns.
i think police need training to work with people like this and to de-escalate in general. i think i lot of them need treatment for their own PTSD. i think they fucked up here.
but i don’t think it’s realistic either to think that they can, in practice, handle things the same way a nurse with many years of experience and additional tools can. and i would also point out that many social workers (not my profession but related, just the last field i saw stats on) have been assaulted by their clients.
i think the parents could have handled it better. i think it’s possible cultural attitudes toward mental illness or other factors unique to the family played a part in their decision-making.
and as another parent of a person with developmental disability (plus serious mental illness), i think it is wise to prepare yourself and your child for how you might handle circumstances in which you or someone else needs to call for help. i don’t think it is safest for your child or for you (or others, obviously) for you to refuse to call until there is a body.
but i also understand that your experience and your child are not the same as mine.
i just wish the cops hadn’t fucked up, and i wish the family had done it differently. for all the good that does.
edit - extra words, a wrong word
i don’t think it is safest for your child or for you (or others, obviously) for you to refuse to call until there is a body.
Man a little hyperbole brings out all the haters. 🙂
i think police need training to work with people like this and to de-escalate in general. i think i lot of them need treatment for their own PTSD. i think they fucked up here.
but i don’t think it’s realistic either to think that they can, in practice, handle things the same way a nurse with many years of experience and additional tools can. and i would also point out that many social workers (not my profession but related, just the last field i saw stats on) have been assaulted by their clients.
All your points are reasonable. But I have to weigh all other factors against the likelihood that cops are going to show up and harm or kill my child unnecessarily.
Are there actually other circumstances where I’d call police? Probably. Is it MY fault that I need to do this calculus about whether the folks paid to help might kill my child instead? No, it’s not, and I won’t apologize for it.
no, you shouldn’t have to do that calculus. but i want your kid to be okay if it ever comes to that.
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What I’m stating is that everyone involved had a part in passing the buck of responsibility to the next party until ultimately the end result was almost assuredly going to be bodily harm to Yong Yang.
Fair, but I go back to my original comment. Possibly the parents would have behaved differently if they had any faith the police would have. As it turns out, the police didn’t, they did what every parent of a special needs child fears.
Here’s a hypothetical for you, if your son had an episode and took someone hostage with a knife, you wouldn’t call the police?
Sure, OK, you have found a corner case. Bravo, I guess? We can pretend I was using the modern definition of the word “literally.” 😉
It doesn’t change the overall point.
Here’s a hypothetical for you, which is far more likely than your own for an autistic kid. My son doesn’t even have the concept of holding someone hostage, and I venture to guess this is true for lots of others on the spectrum.
Let’s say he has a knife in his hand because that’s what he happened to have in his hand (somehow) when his fight or flight mechanism was triggered, and now he’s massively overstimulated, and in a meltdown. He’s not trying to hurt anyone (I’m not convinced he knows stabbing someone is an option a knife provides), but he’s waving it around because he is very active with his arms when he’s overstimulated, and he might even try to grapple with someone while holding it, again not really recognizing the potential for great harm. It’s going to be a real challenge to get it from him safely, and someone could get badly injured.
Do I call the cops in that circumstance? Not if I want to see him sans-bulletholes again. (Not a direct example of what I described, but close enough for these purposes.)
Edited to add - I read the story in OP, or I read about Linden Cameron, or I read about Elijah McClain (and others) and that’s my son there, or may as well be. Elijah McClain especially - heartbreaking. Nothing about any of those circumstances seems like an outcome I couldn’t imagine with any given group of police. I have no faith that more than a vanishingly small percentage would even see the problem with how these situations were handled, let alone try to do it differently.
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Please, I hope you didn’t take my hypothetical as an attack
I kinda took it as a bit of a strawman, even if unintentional. That’s why I contrasted with a more reasonable one.
I appreciate that your intent is not to defend police regarding OP or in general. However, as I said elsewhere, are there actually other circumstances where I’d call police? Probably. My original statement was (slightly) hyperbolic.
However, is it MY fault that I need to do this calculus about whether the folks paid to help might kill my child instead? No, it’s not, and I won’t apologize for it.
Police have earned their reputation.
If I can’t count on them to help without killing me or people I love needlessly, I’m not going to call them. I would think anyone, even a cop, would understand this fundamental requirement.
My cousin is no longer living, he had a heart attack; however, despite his inability to control his strength, I did allow him to be around my kids, but never alone and never without me being on pins and needles the entire time. Its sad to say that, but ultimately I am just glad he and them got to interact. It brought joy to both of them equally, I’m sure.
I’m sorry for the sad ending to your story, but glad that there were opportunities for joy along the way. These situations are tough, I get it.
I’d try to be understanding with the parents, but I admit family waiting too long is a problem. I remember watching this video and getting frustrated at every missed opportunity…
As someone who struggles with mental illness, but has been lucky enough to not need intervention or hospitalization in my life so far, this seems like another good time to say ACAB.
It’s never a bad time to say ACAB. Occasionally, one does something decent, but even a serial killer might occasionally hold the door open for somebody at the post office or whatever.
Every time I see a positive police story, I suspect copaganda. They are class traitors, restricting our liberties in order to protect capital, and it’s by design.
I’ve dealt with cops during bad mental health episodes. Honestly I’ve been extremely lucky - assuming ALL cops were bastards I’d 100% be dead right now.
ACAB
Please do not spread misinformation.
If you have a pit with a hundred snakes, and only two of them are aggressive and venomous, would you climb into that pit?
I sure as hell wouldn’t
It doesn’t matter if there are good cops, the few bad cops ruin all of them because it’s a dice roll who you get.
If you have 100 doctors and 2 of them are incompetent would you never go to hospital? Trusting any unknown person is a dice roll.
Doctors are held to a higher degree than our police officers are, so yes. I’d take my chances with getting those two incompetent doctors.
Expecially since if I’m unhappy with my care, I can choose a different one.
Can I do that with a police officer?
No, no I cannot.
Even if something goes wrong with that doctor, if I’m still alive, I’ll be able to take action against them, taking action against a police officer?
Goodluck.
They aren’t literally saying anything about the marriage status of anyone’s parents. More that cops are all offensive or disagreeable persons
I’ve never heard of anyone intending the “B” to mean anything but “Bad”.
I have always known B to be bastards
Step 1) Find out the name of the cop who shot your son
Step 2) Call a mental health check on the cop
Bonus step) Call the cops over the previous cop’s mental health
/s
Step 1) Find out the name of the cop who shot your son
Step 2) Become a cop
Step 3) ???
Step 4) Enjoy a paid vacation
I feel like I’m reading this same story once a month. There are so many people that need help and then the police show up and murder them. All the time.
That’s not entirely true.
Sometimes they just shoot the family dog(s) for barking and go back to work like nothing happened.
There are countless stories of people cradling their dogs as they bleed out from bullet wounds weeping as the cops write up a ticket or something. Just constantly, all the time, and for some reason we don’t DO anything about it. Like, as a group, we could end this nightmare tomorrow if we could all cooperate for one goddamn day without horrible shitty people trying to politicize and subvert every community action we try to do to make the world a little better.
So damn true on all points. And yeah we could do so much if we could organize but trying to get Americans off their ass just once to stand up for something is damn near impossible. I wish I was in France. Those mofo’s start a riot the moment the government does anything even remotely stupid.
This is one of my biggest (hopefully irrational) fears. My dog is not violent but she is reactive, there’s no way she wouldn’t be shot dead if police ever had occasion to come into our house.
It sounds like the family did the right thing. They did NOT call the police, they contacted LA’s mental health team, who sent a mobile response unit.
The issue with mobile crisis teams (which most cities have by now) is that they won’t do anything if there’s a weapon besides call the police. That’s where things went south.
There needs to be more collaboration between mental health response teams and police to prevent this sort of thing. Also, wtf is the point of carrying a taser if you pull out your gun on a dude who is barely moving and holding a knife? Probably didn’t even need to be tased.
No repercussions, so they shoot to kill
Less chance of liability. A lawyer friend of my parents said to never use a taser or pepper spray for self defense at a home. Just use a gun and empty it into center mass, anything else increases a chance of a lawsuit. Trying to shoot to injur vastly increases your chance of losing a suit, because they can argue if you had the time to do that you didn’t really think you were in danger.
So the legal system is promoting killing people.
Police have 1 job…
And it’s to uphold order for the ruling class.
Police are class traitors. ACAB.
And they are trigger-happy like barbaric IDF personnel.
Can’t have mental health issues if you’ve been shot dead. It’s the police way
No no no, it’s “fatally shot”!
“Shootalyzed”
A Psyshootogist
Police should NOT be involved in the mental health process.
Currently they are legally required.
They should, they just need to be competent.
I doubt medical personel would be too keen to go alone in situations like these.
Can always trust the cops to show up and make everything infinitely worse.
Cops aren’t your friend. They aren’t there to help you or protect you. They are there to oppress you.
Very genuine question: why do cops never use taser guns for situations like this? Presumably they knew the weapon was a knife, so no risk of a shootout.
Honestly this is what infuriates me when 2nd amendment enthusiasts say “UK cops should carry guns” - fuck off mate, we de-escalate and use non-lethal way more effectively than your wanker cops who only have a hammer and everything is a nail.
Give your cops a toolkit instead of just a hammer and you’ll see the difference.
You’re responding to someone asking why they don’t use their tasers. They have a toolkit. They choose to only use the hammer from it.
Yeah my comment wasn’t intended to be critical of the person I was replying to - it was infact highlighting their point.
American cops don’t tend to use tasers when the suspect is wielding a knife because it’s seen as a lethal weapon, to which they have a lethal response for. Or as another responder replied - the training is the issue, US cops are hardly short of equipment.
The typical service worker has more training time before doing their job than a cop gets before getting a gun and a badge. That’s the other side of the coin.
very genuine small penis.
HEY! Civilian, stop talking about stuff you know nothing about!
In dangerous situations and non-whites (same thing , right) we need LETHAL FORCE to control the situation. If someone us murd…I mean, fatally shot, so be it.
Tasers are just for torture. It’s fun but we can’t be always playing! We’re working here!
/s
Tasers kinda suck.
Dunno man. Gunshot wounds suck pretty bad too.
“police recount a clinician’s saying Yang was violent before the shooting on May 2”
Yeah, they knew that surely.
They knew they were going into an environment where someone with diminished mental capacity had access to bladed weapons.
They likely knew he was actively wielding bladed weapons.
They had access to less than lethal methods of self defence, tasers, body armour, mace, tranquilizers, superior numbers, training in hand to hand combat, fucking nets etc.
They chose to use firearms in lieu of these and shot a mentally ill person to death unnecessarily.
Guns should be a last resort, not a first resort
American cops are such fucking pussies
Acab tho but especially American ones
They likely knew he was actively wielding bladed weapons.
I watched the full video. They were repeatedly told he didn’t have any weapons. The clinician just said the man was violent and kicked him.
I have no idea why they didn’t use less than lethal first, they talk about it but I don’t know which officer was tasked with it. It seems like they didn’t expect him to be armed when they entered.
If a blind man were to ask a police officer for help crossing the road, the cop would probably shoot all the drivers.
Who are you kidding? They would shoot the blind man because he would be approaching with a stick like weapon
I keep seeing a video come across my feed where this actually happens. The guy has a folding cane in his back pocket and he’s walking down the sidewalk. Cops roll up and start accusing him of carrying a weapon and that he can’t be blind if he’s not actively using his cane.
Edit: here’s the video
I hope this guy gets a payday for his illegal detainment, arrest and for the officers refusal to identify. Florida taxpayers will have to pay for it since the police have no accountability but at least those tax dollars will go to getting some justice. Fuck these cops. ACAB.
Depends on how well the blind man is dressed and what color his skin is.
Yeah, it’s complicated.
do not call the police. many countries outside the united states understand this already
It’s normal practice in the UK for police to aid the handling of mentally unstable people. The difference is that British police don’t shoot people. Ever.
988 - the mental health hotline that is supposed to be the alternative to 911 - will call the cops too. There’s no winning.
Edit: I can suggest the Trans Lifeline, and suggest other people look to warm lines, to be a little less nihilistic. They will not involve emergency services without your consent. Unfortunately, hours/availability are limited for most.
Eh no?
Most counties outside the US have actual police forces which are there to serve and protect.
Your Euro-centric bias is showing.
Uh huh, and that is bad because? Because I know it can actually work well?
Maybe in Europe. SA, Africa, Asia, Indonesia probably not so much.
