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 arrest/detain them and take them from the premise, under the law.
So basically 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? They could not hurt anyone but themselves locked in an apartment.
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.
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.
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?”.
Something something, I’d rather be alone with a bear.
I’m telling you, cops work. Anytime I had a problem and I called the cops, boom! Right away, I had a different problem.
(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.
Devil’s advocate’s advocate: Or they’ve multiplied…
The /s is the most important 2 characters in your reply.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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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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.
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
That’s funny, because I’ve never heard of anyone intending the B to mean “Bad”.
The usual expansion of it is “Bastards”.
We had this happen in my town a couple weeks ago. Cop got called for a mental health check because a 19year old with a knife was acting erratic. Cop pulls up and gets out the car, the kid runs at him yelling “shoot me! Shoot me! Shoot me!” so the cop pulled out his gun and shot him. Didn’t go for the tazer or the his mace, just right to deadly force despite being called over specifically to prevent the kid from dying.
Cops should neve, under any circumstances, be called in for a mental episode. All they will do is escalate the situation and cause harm.
The family didn’t call the cops in this case. They called a mental health crisis team, and they called the cops due to the presence of a weapon.
At the same time you can call social services and you end up with them being dead instead because someone having a psychotic episode slashed/shot them…
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes, you can now take the time to go two replies down for a bunch of examples
That sounds absurd. Please provide one example of that happening.
It’s absurd to think that never happens. It’s not absurd to think that doesn’t happen as often as cops killing someone.
I never claimed it never happened. It’s just not something I ever recall hearing of. I spent 20 years in the medical industry and a few of those in the mental health space. I’ve heard of a lot of violence on mental health professionals but the characterization that the people I replied to didn’t fit with my understanding. I haven’t made it through all the articles but I’m still not convinced it’s a thing that happens enough to consider it anything but rare.
https://people.com/teri-zenner-social-worker-murdered-widower-honors-memory-7557328
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/01/09/social-workers-field-safety-remains-concern-after-killing/
Yeah, social workers are never put in danger, right?
Cherry picking data does not a compelling argument make.
According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics in 2022 the total number of deaths for community and social services in the US was… 19. (That’s on page 8, in case you want to check.)
I found a CBS article from 2017 that cited another BLS study which said that social workers were the 20th most dangerous job category in the US, with a fatality rate of 1 per 100,000 people. That’s fewer deaths than architects and engineers, which was the 19th deadliest job.
On the other hand, American police have killed more than 1000 people every year for the past ten years. To put that another way, the police killed more people last year than social workers died of job-related causes in the past decade.
It’s really funny that by almost every metric you can think of, policing in the US is systemically flawed and needs major oversight.
Interesting that all these are Canadian stories
Didn’t know Illinois and Kansas are Canadian provinces… Also I’m in Canada so not surprising that Google would provide Canadian results for the most part.
Cops should neve, under any circumstances, be called in for a mental episode
Yea I’m gonna have to disagree with you hard on this one. Just because you dislike police or have had bad experiences does not mean you should let someone having a crisis subject others around them to a very real possibility of imminent danger because “cops bad”.
Do police need more training? Sure. Do they need major reform in many areas? Of course. But are they all bad? No.
The mere presence of a cop, even without a visible weapon, will escalate any situation regarding mentally unstable people. Period.
If you don’t understand why a person going through a crisis would freak out when a figure of (ultimately violent) power appears right after they picked a weapon you have a serious problem with basic empathy.
For the record, I haven’t had any bad experiences with cops, in fact every interaction I’ve had so far has been either neutral or actually pretty nice. I’ve had my fair share of breakdowns as a teenager tho, and I can assure you that a cop would’ve never helped a single time. Even the nicest one.
Look at the report for this case, for example:
The officers met with DMH personnel outside the residence who indicated that the DMH were called to the scene due to Yang’s erratic and threatening behavior. The officers were also advised that Yang did not live at the location, and had attempted to assault one of the DMH employees when they attempted to speak with him. Based on their assessment, DMH determined Yang was a danger to others.
In their efforts to assist DMH personnel, the officers requested additional units, a supervisor, and notified the Department’s Mental Evaluation Unit. Several attempts were made to communicate with Yang and encourage him to exit the residence; however, he refused. After formulating a plan and obtaining a key to the residence, the officers ascended a narrow staircase leading to the front door. The officers announced their presence and then utilized the key to open the front door. As they did so, Yang was observed standing in the living room several feet away, armed with a large kitchen knife. Moments later, Yang advanced toward the officers and an Officer Involved Shooting occurred.
Here’s the singular question:
What was the rush?
They needed to take him in, but they are afraid of him acting erratic and wielding a knife.
Why the fuck do they push to enter the building? There was no one in there. He could not hurt anyone while he remained hold up inside other than himself.
Why couldn’t they just wait him out?
By pushing to resolve the situation immediately and forcing their way in, they exasperated the situation.
I think they should have been called, but they should be there as backup in case someone is getting attacked. But no one was in danger here. There was no reason to push this.
You missed the options of using “less lethal” force as well, why go for live ammo immediately?
One of my biggest complaints with police and why things escalate unnecessarily is because they are fucking impatient. They give “orders” and if you don’t comply immediately you are met with force.
As someone who has been on the receiving end of one of these sorts of calls, please for the love of everything holy, shut the god damn fuck up. Truly you have absolutely no idea what the fuck you are talking about. Calling the cops in a situation like that is so incredibly dangerous and stupid and harmful, you should feel ashamed for defending it. Please rethink your beliefs.
Cops should never be called for mental health episodes
Ever
End of story
You are wrong
1 good cop isn’t gonna stop the other 20 from shooting your family and pets.
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
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.
I thought this was a repost from a while ago, but USA gonna USA.
I do that all the time. I go “oh there’s an update on this case, cool. Wait, these names aren’t familiar. Am I remembering wrong?” one google later “no this is a second time, and I also found a third and fourth that didn’t make their way to me.”
Would be curious about stats on how many wellness calls end in the person being checked on dying.
Off the top of my head ~50 or less officers in the US die from violence every year if you exclude traffic fatalities. At least according to this (178 killed in 3 years) that means police are killing the people they’re called to help at a higher rate. Would seem to point to a person calling the police for help is in more danger than the police are on any random call.
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
Depends on how well the blind man is dressed and what color his skin is.
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.
Everyone say it with me, FUCK THE POLICE!
Anyone that had lose someone to yhe police knows how hard it is to get “justice.” Especially if they are sheriffs.
We shot the sad person, mental health crisis averted!
*jumping highfive over the sounds of grief *
The only way to stop a suicide with a gun, is a homicide with a gun.
Shoot the hostage.
Classic US police.
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.
The US only has 911 for emergencies AFAIK, who else would you call? Of course, police is basically useless here as opposed to an ambulance, particularly in the US when they know little more than brute force, but IDK how much say you have in what service they dispatch.
We have separate numbers for each service other than the central Europe-wide 112, and they are free unless misuse happens. A boarding school roommate had a mental health breakdown so severe an ambulance was called, with actual trauma-trained doctors who provided basic psychiatric treatment (sedation pills and further care advice to dormkeepers). So an ambulance is helpful for mental health crises but I cannot imagine cops helping in any way in this case - they have restraint tools that might thwart violence or suicide attempts but this situation did not need them, and a doctor on the phone (which you get immediately) can help with everything else better than the police anyway.
Just fyi, 112 is normally a GSM standard emergency number and should work anywhere in the world on a GSM network. (In theory, so always worth a try in case of need)
Uhm, in Germany it’s completely normal for police to assist in situations of mental health and instead of shooting them they talk to them, or, as a last resort, restrain people and bring them back to a care facility, unharmed.
Police receive proper 3 year training and most of them even have a required university degree.
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?
Tale as old as time.
Cops aren’t your friend. They aren’t there to help you or protect you. They are there to oppress you.
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.
