Police are worse than useless. They are actively harmful. We just had a medical emergency with one of our encampment residents. She was flat on the ground, stuporous, with severe decerebrate posturing and breathing normally.
The cops radioed it in as an overdose (which means EMS will take forever to respond), even though there were no signs of OD. To make things worse, the 911 dispatcher confirmed to me that the cops had given them the complete wrong address in their call.
Even worse, I was the only one on scene carrying Naloxone. The cops made everything worse and were not even prepared for an overdose. The cops asked me several times if I could administer Narcan; I had to correct them repeatedly and tell them there were no overdose symptoms and that the woman had a recent history of aneurysm. They stood their and did nothing, and were afraid to even touch her.
NEVER assume that police have made a proper emergency call. Always call 911 yourself. Carry Narcan.
@chadloder honestly it'd be best if police didn't have weapons (besides a tazer or if the situation is serious enough) and a decent amount of medical knowledge and equipment (like a med pack or something)
@gavinisdie @chadloder While I agree that the police uses its weapons too often, I would say that there are cases, where the lack of weapons makes things more dangerous. As examples, I would like to give two historical instances where the intelligent use of weapons (and a wiser police in general) would have saved lives: The munich massacre of 1972 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_massacre) and the Gladbeck Hostage Crisis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladbeck_hostage_crisis).
