roomforthetuna posted:

This guy is hosed up, but as far as I can tell from the way it ended up presented in the news, the police and media combined are way more hosed up.

In that the news reported "the police say the guy needed medical help, the police say they were responding to a domestic disturbance involving his wife".

Meanwhile the immediate observable facts were the police went to the guy's house with an armored car and surrounded it with a SWAT team, which pretty much contradicts their story, and someone else's story is the police opened with threatening his wife that they'd call CPS if they couldn't immediately confiscate his guns, and that that was the "domestic disturbance involving his wife" - a technically true statement from the police but strongly implying "he was assaulting his wife," which nothing seems to corroborate (other than reasonable assumptions because the guy is clearly hosed up).

Just everything about what the police and reporters did seems tremendously irresponsible and incompetent, maybe even worse if they're telling the truth that they thought he needed medical help, which they're almost certainly not.

Also it sounded like the guy's one 'demand' was to get in writing that they aren't going to put him in jail or shoot him. This apparently led to a seven hour standoff. Surely this is a situation that could have been resolved peacefully and quickly, by saying "yes, okay, that's reasonable enough, we just want to take the illegal gun and that'll be the end of it." Problem solved, no seven hour standoff. Especially given they were meanwhile saying to the news "no intention of charges".

America.