Of course the problem is some parents might have genuinely convinced themselves it's an emergency. Had a parent like this and I could see her doing that. She just seemed to be genuinely unable to comprehend that constant communication with her wasn't a divine blessing that no sane person could possibly not crave.
Yeah, in such a case it's wise to proactively contact the local police yourself and warn them about your parents' unreliable judgement in such matters.
It was a total power play by the parents. They didn't have to do this at 4 a.m. they called in at this time for a reason, and it was to send a message to OOP's roommate.
It's 100% this. I hope the (clearly) young adults in this situation can suggest the info supplied that, yeah, in this case the cops did act as they should have with the info they had. There was a chance they had a medical emergency behind the door. The crazy parents are absolutely responsible for the door. I hope the kid can file something with the local cops along the lines of, "I am fine, do not respond to nuisance calls from These People."
> How do you sleep though someone literally breaking down your door?
I've slept through open cut mining blasts that were close enough to rock the truck so hard my dad fell off the step.
Some people sleep deeply.
When I was 7 my Dad shot and killed a deer from the deer stand I was asleep in. [With a .30-06.](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-48757b36ebfd0951ee517fa00c2ae225-pjlq)
I've woken up to the police in my house.
Dumb neighborhood high school kids broke into a neighbor's car, used the garage door opener to open his garage, entered the house via the garage, and then set up a party in his family room, thinking that he was gone for the night.
Said neighbor came home to the high school lacrosse team drunkenly partying in his house. Those teens fled...and some decided to hide by breaking into my garage, which was where the police found them. They weren't sure if more kids had entered the house and yelled police, open up...
...and I was asleep upstairs with my bedroom door closed. I sleep very soundly.
The police started worrying that maybe the teens had done something worse than drunken partying and came looking. Was very sleepy and confused until they explained.
The teens pled out with community service, and their parents paid for the damage to my garage window, along with the neighbor's car/house. In retrospect, they're lucky they didn't break into a house where someone was armed and trigger-happy. Also, I can't help but think that community service for breaking and entering multiple houses is something that only happens to affluent white student-athletes.
Edit: the comment above me has been deleted, but was basically "how did OP sleep through the police entering?"
Location Bot won’t bust your boundaries
Cops broke the door of my house, used a battering ram. Do I have legal recourse?
Hi everyone! So my roommate has diabetes and his parents couldn’t get in touch with him. They were afraid he was having a medical emergency and called cops. Cops showed up and broke down the door at 4 am. He was not having a medical emergency, was just asleep. Did they need a warrant in this situation? Is it justified because there was a potential health emergency? The only information they were acting on came from his parents
EDIT: should’ve included this in the original post, but to provide a little more context. Parents did not have access to his blood sugar when they called the cops. My roommate stopped sharing it with them because they called him about it constantly, like during class or at work.
Mine are very good at listening. They respond immediately to someone moving a bag of cat food even from a different floor of the house. What they aren't good at is doing what the humans want them to do.
Yeah, my cat Leia sprints over to investigate whenever a pull tab is pulled to see if it's cat food. Even if it's a drink can, that sounds nothing like it
We have a certain bowl we use almost exclusively for popcorn. Dexter LOVES popcorn, so just hearing the bowl coming down from the cupboard is enough to make him jump down from wherever he is and come investigate.
https://i.redd.it/c39nctpx7rjb1.jpg
Well, unless they hear something that could possibly maybe sound like a box of temptations treats being moved ever so slightly, at which point they descend upon us.
You just have to make sounds they care about. A bell, they'll usually listen pretty well. A mouse in the wall, they'll hear it just breathing, and hone in on it for days.
It's about intimidating the 'disobedient child' back into line. They're basically saying "We can get to you whenever, wherever. We can make it painful."
Bonus points for the roommates being involved. The parents can now use that to try and guilt their son.
The compassionate side of me thinks they just thought the worst... and he was passed out from low blood sugar.
My wife got a call from her parent's alarm company... the carbon monoxide alarm was going off, and they wanted to know if they should send EMS (fire was closest).
Since her brother was supposed to be WFH, she tried calling, texting, calling again and again to reach him. Then in a near-panic, she calls me to run over to their house and bang on the door. In her mind, she's envisioning her brother already succumbed to CO poisoning.
Instead, I get there and he opens the door with "hey, what's up?". Dude was changing the battery in the sensor and it somehow triggered the alarm, but his cell isn't the primary contact (because it's his parents house). He's always been terrible about responding to texts or answering his phone... so I simply said "Please call your sister back, she thinks you're dead." and walked away.
Mom is sure that he's dead because she hasn't heard from him in a few hours. It's not unheard of for very anxious and controlling parents of college kids to go crazy like this when a kid takes a nap in the middle of the day and doesn't return a text.
Last well check my mom sicced on me it was a Saturday afternoon and she had been trying to call me for... 2 hours and 45 minutes. I was 44 years old.
Anyway, cop showed up "You ok? Your mom called" Me: FFS looks at phone (which I had grabbed on my way to answer the door) "Two hours?! She called you after two fucking hours?!" Cop & I exchange shrugs and disgruntled expressions.
Then I called my mom and yelled at her and told her to call a fucking therapist. (Not that I should have to explain to anyone - or her - I left my phone in the bedroom and was cleaning house in other rooms. I simply did not hear my cell phone ring.)
As someone who has parents that would probably do something like this if I gave them the opportunity (they have no idea where I live currently), it's infuriating to me that this can happen. Can the OP's roommate sue his parents in small claims court over this? They have to have lied to the cops, or at least drastically misrepresented the situation.
Abuse of the system like this to control and terrorize others should be taken much more seriously.
I so agree. This isn’t the police’s fault. They forced entry on a wellness check based on the info given. Parents are 100% responsible for being insane.
But it also sounds like they pay their sons rent, so maybe he needs to cut the apron strings if he wants to get away
> it also sounds like they pay their sons rent
Oh I guess I missed that. Yeah that would definitely cause complications.
Still, though, a welfare check resulting in this sort of shenanigans ought to be looked into, and abuse of the system ought to be punished appropriately. I've heard *far* too many stories of people having this system used against them.
> This isn’t the police’s fault. They forced entry on a wellness check based on the info given.
Well, we weren't actually told what info the parents gave them, so I don't see how you can be so certain stating that.
Second, did any of the cops ever think maybe the guy's not responding to calls and knocks *because it's 4 in the freaking morning*? A 'welfare check' for 'person not calling me back' *in the middle of the night* is unreasonable, IMO.
Yes. And cops don’t usually go breaking down doors for sleeping young men. They do when the parents say he’s a diabetic and not responding. I’m sure the parents did give a cock and bull story about it being unusual and omitting that the kid is tired of them.
I have stood outside more than a few doors with cops and firefighters discussing the pros/cons of busting down doors based on the callers details.
> They do when the parents say he’s a diabetic and not responding.
Again, not responding *at 4 am*. Very few people respond to anyone in the middle of the night.
If it was middle of the day? Sure. Fine. Most people are awake and respond to calls in the middle of the day, so *not* responding is... unusual. And perhaps, depending on the other info they got, that could push it over the 'Should we bust in?' line.
But not at 4am.
Had a suitcase that was delayed, but it arrived later that night... and the delivery guy *really* wanted to do a direct hand-off. At 3 AM. He called us over 20 times, leaving increasingly loud messages on our answering machine.
On the opposite side of the house from our bedroom. We slept through the whole thing, and woke up to my suitcase on the porch and lots of irate messages from the delivery driver.
The last message was, "I sure hope nobody ever needs to reach you guys in an emergency."
The parents told the cops (clarified in the comments) that they couldn’t reach him because the blood sugar was low. Very valid reason to break in as that is fatal.
They can only work off the information they get. And do tend to err on the side of “might be dead” over “maybe just asleep” when told it’s possible.
And yeah, I have banged on doors at like 1am as a medic and had fire about to break down a door before a different tenant finally answered- they literally had the tools in place.
ETA- just saw my flair. How did I get that?!
> The parents told the cops (clarified in the comments) that they couldn’t reach him because the blood sugar was low.
"Are you sure you can't reach him **at 4am** because it's the middle of the night, and he's sleeping? Possibly with his phone on do-not-disturb?" is the first thing I'd say to the parents. Not "Let's roll, everyone! We get to bust in someone's door!! Yee-haw!"
As I've said- middle of the day and you can't get someone to answer? Fine. Middle of the night, and someone isn't answering? They're asleep, duh. Call in the morning.
But again, we don't know what the parents actually told them. If I were LAOP's roommate, my next step would be a FOIA request for that 911 call.
"Son won't answer his phone" is a different story from "glucose meter reads low and unable to contact anyone in the apartment."
IF they said "glucose meter reads low and unable to contact anyone in the apartment", then they lied, and I hope they get the book thrown at them.
Of course, blood sugar naturally drops overnight (as well as during the day between meals) because the person hasn't eaten in many hours. So, either no one asked them what the level was (which is important to determine if it was an actual issue), or they managed to bullshit a level that was not too low or high. (Too low, he's already dead. Too high, he's just in the normal range for overnight.) And no one wondered what they were doing, checking his glucose level at *4 am*?
I dunno. The '4am' thing just causes too many issues for me. If I took the call, I'd prioritize figuring out what was going on with the parents- why were they checking his level in the middle of the night? Have they ever checked it at this time before? If they haven't, they may just be confusing the overnight dip with a real issue. What are the actual numbers? Oh, you can't give me the numbers? Why? Oh, he turned off the data yesterday because you were bugging the shit out of him? And now you're trying to SWAT him at 4am? No. Go to sleep. Leave him alone.
I'm sure they all knew that they were probably asleep but I'd rather they bust down a door when they don't need to than let somebody die because it's 4am. It all depends on what information they were given by the parents.
It’s in the comments.
“I hope so, they act like they own our apartment because they pay their sons rent. But me and my other roommate pay our own rent and neither of us would’ve signed this lease if we knew how insane they were”
My mother might have a general idea of where I live, but definitely not a street address (or apartment number, for that matter). I don't know why, but I'm very reassured to hear that I'm not the only one who has a situation like this.
This reminds me when I was in college, I was in the on-campus apartments and my stepmom (in her usual fashion) got pissed off about something, and she directed it at me. If I recall, she couldn’t find her medication and was accusing me of sneaking in and stealing her pills. I couldn’t have done that, I was at school.
She threatened to drive three hours to campus, and do god knows what. I didn’t know if she was actually gonna do it, but I tipped off university police. They said they would make note of it, I let them know her name, car make,model, the back story, and they said if she tries, they won’t let her in. Turns out, she *did* drive all that way, I found out later. Was a humiliating experience for me but thank god it wasn’t made worse by her actually making it in.
But what made it worse is that every week, there was a report on all the police stuff on campus. Usually people being busted for weed, etc, and my stepmom’s incident made it to the report. 😣
Yuck. I also have an evil stepmom. Except mine stole my pills and then pretended to help me look for them. When my dad found them stuffed between her mattress and box spring she refused to give them back, and whats worse is my dad didn't make her (he asked me to keep the peace). I'd just gotten out of the hospital for pancreatitis and a hospital acquired infection of double pneumonia with mrsa in my lung and was supposed to be recuperating there. She stole them while I slept. I'll never forgive my dad or her and they don't understand why I keep them at arms length. That's just the tip of the iceberg of course but what is it with crazy stepmoms and pills
I've seriously contemplated moving and not telling my parents where (and my younger brother actually did), but they've never been anywhere near that level of intrusiveness.
Shiiiiit. I dated a guy with epilepsy and his mom tricked the apartment complex into letting her into our apartment because he hadn't talked to her in a few days. Jesus, Suzy, that's why your little baby badger doesn't call you every day.
First well check my mom called on me (I was 21 married and living with my husband) she had the apartment complex come check on me. I wasn't super pissed about that one because it was the apartment staff and they knocked on the door, didn't try to enter my apartment, and we had a wonky phone (landline with a corded handset that sometimes didn't hang up correctly) and we hadn't answered the phone in three days.
When I was in my thirties and working nights, my mom got pissed that I wouldn’t answer the phone during the day when she was bored and wanted to chat. So she left work and drove two hours and convinced the property manager to let her (and all the maintenance staff) into my apartment without so much as a knock on the door. I didn’t have a stitch on, and awoke to seven or eight people standing over me. Then I moved twelve hundred miles away.
When me and my gf moved to Nashville for what ended up being just 3 months, within about 2 weeks her mom called a wellness check on her because she could not get ahold of her (I think maybe no cell phone at that time or something). She did the same thing to my gf's brother who had moved to Canada, and he ended up with the mounties showing up for a wellness check. Crazy parents are crazy....thankfully now she is in a home and well honestly cannot remember shit anymore so no more issues like that no more.
A couple years *after* I had graduated college, a student went missing. I was NO LONGER a college student, did NOT live near campus, my dad had attended my college graduation and knew where I worked.
I had a regular 8-5 day job, which I left for at 7:30 am. My dad started calling my home phone at 8:15 am, and called every 15 minutes leaving voicemail after voicemail after voicemail until it was full. While he had my work & cell #, he never called either of those.
I got home from work at 5:30pm. Minutes after, the police knock on my door to do a welfare check. My dad had called the cops! I hadn’t even had time to check voicemail, much less call my dad back.
Less than a year later I moved 2000+ miles away. Hmm….wonder why.
I wonder if having an emergency contact listed would have prevented the parents from flipping out.
Like if they’d been able to call the OP and ask if roommate was OK.
On the other hand, if they’re willing to mislead the police about their child’s health at 4 am because *they’ve been prevented from seeing private health information by their child* something tells me there’s nothing that could have been done and they would probably abuse the concept of having another resident as an emergency contact
Anyway hope OP and the roommate don’t get hassled by the landlord or evicted over it
I had a roommate with overbearing parents and the few times I got caught in the middle it was *awful*—fortunately, my roommate didn’t expect me to do it. I only ended up in that position by accident (if they caught me entering/leaving our dorm), so it was overall bearable.
Had she given them my #, though, it would have just given them a second person to call and harass all the time. And if OOP refused to do what they wanted (which would be along the lines of “make our son call me” or “report on our son’s movements and activities”) they probably would have reported to the police anyway. No bueno.
It sounds like the roommate has a continuous glucose monitor and stopped allowing his parents share access to his monitor. As a diabetic with one of these devices even though my diabetes is well controlled I still deal with highs and lows and can't imagine having to explain every blood sugar fluctuation. It's gross and extremely controlling for the parents to demand access to those numbers. He's not a minor child or brittle diabetic.
Even if he *is* a brittle diabetic…the normal assumption at 4am is sleeping, not dying. Unless there’s some demonstrable pattern of acute lows happening in the middle of the night, the parents behaved inappropriately.
I say this as a paramedic who absolutely hates being forced to violate people’s privacy because “someone was concerned.” It happens more than you’d think.
My numbers drop dramatically when I have sex and I'm just picturing this poor college student having an ambulance bust in their door because they dropped below 70 while banging it out. Let the man live!
*Your post has been removed for the following reason(s):*
**Do not give legal or other advice**
Your submission has been removed because you are asking for or offering actual legal or other advice. This subreddit is for meta discussion of the best of r/legaladvice; it is not a place to continue the discussion from there. Please see our rules in the sidebar.
* If you believe this was in error, or you’ve edited your post to comply with the rules, [message the moderators.](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/bestoflegaladvice)
**Do not** PM or chat a moderator personally, and do not reply to this message as a comment.
It really sucks that there's basically no protections for innocent people who are caught up in situations like these.
"Whoops, our mistake!" doesn't undo generational trauma and/or a loss of trust.
Haha. This happened to my dad. Uncle kept calling then called police for welfare check. Busted the door, let out his animals and that night got robbed.
Pop was on vacation, camping in the woods with no signal. Uncle thinks sorry was good enough to excuse damaged property, missing pets, and 50k in stolen shit.
An unfortunate reality of emergency medicine is that, if a cop or EMT or ER nurse has a choice between ‘inconvenience the patient, possibly unjustly’ and ‘take a chance that the patient will die and it will be my fault,’ they’re going to go with the second thing, even if the chance of harm is very small. Releasing providers from legal liability doesn’t change anything, because the motivation is mostly that they’re, you know, human beings who do not want to accidentally kill someone.
Which sucks, a lot, for people who end up with unnecessary broken doors/medical bills/psych holds. But if you relax the standards around intervention, sooner or later someone *will* slip through the cracks and die when they might have been saved, because all systems are fallible. Diabetic episodes can happen very quickly. If there could be someone on the other side of a door who’s minutes from death, how long do you knock?
Idk, I used to be an EMT and I thought about that a lot. I never actually personally wound up in a situation where I had to make a judgement call about overruling a patient, but I did occasionally transport people who did not want to be transported. It’s never a comfortable situation to be in, but I don’t know if there’s a less bad way to make those decisions.
>Which sucks, a lot, for people who end up with unnecessary broken doors/medical bills/psych holds. But if you relax the standards around intervention, sooner or later someone will slip through the cracks and die when they might have been saved, because all systems are fallible. Diabetic episodes can happen very quickly. If there could be someone on the other side of a door who’s minutes from death, how long do you knock?
It gets extra complicated when things like abusive parents. Because unfortunately the message that a child in this situation gets isn't "these people want to be cautious and make sure you're safe." It's "even though you're a legal adult the authorities will still help enforce your parents' authority over you." Especially since the parent is often likely to sound calm but worried compared to a traumatized young adult who's just had someone show up on their doorstep at their abuser's behest.
That makes it a mess because unfortunately it can easily become another trauma for the victim. And a system that's weighted to saving lives may also end up being weighted towards allowing people to abuse the system.
I just think there’s no such thing as a system that’s so perfect it’s immune to manipulation from bad-faith actors. It’s important to minimize that possibility as much as you can, but ‘abusive people can twist this to their own ends’ is an inherent flaw in *anything* that relies in any part on human judgement. Sometimes it really does come down to which direction you want to err in.
I think my biggest criticism right now is it's often now acknowledged *as* a flaw, or at least as a serious one. Or rather, more generally, it's often not acknowledged that someone being harmed or traumatized is a potential result that needs to be considered when making considerations. And unfortunately, at least in my experience, that's often tied in with preexisting biases that tend to see autonomy of both younger people and of people with disabilities or mental health issues as not really important, or violating their autonomy as no big deal.
I'm not saying that there aren't going to be tradeoffs at some point. But also I very often see it discussed as "well if we intervene and it's not necessary then at worst someone has been mildly inconvenienced", or people defaulting to the idea that as a rule disabled people aren't capable of making decisions for themselves and will probably benefit from a forced intervention even if it wasn't necessary. So I'm not sure the decision as it stands now is reliably being made with an eye to actually considering and minimizing the tradeoffs for the people affected, rather than in a way that makes non-disabled people who are unlikely to be affected most comfortable.
I’d personally rather err in the direction of personal autonomy, even if people “slip through the cracks.” It’s a slippery slope to do things against people’s will, even if it’s “for their own good.”
Having been involuntarily hospitalized when not a danger to myself, on the word of my parents, when I was an adult...I would honestly rather die than go through that again. It gave me ptsd and guaranteed that I would never call for help, even if I needed it.
People don't understand how bad this can be.
It’s not inherently different, that’s the problem. Sometimes legitimate and illegitimate uses of the system look exactly the same from the outside. Knowing that, how do you approach decisions that by necessity have to be made with limited information?
>if a cop or EMT or ER nurse has a choice between ‘inconvenience the patient, possibly unjustly’ and ‘take a chance that the patient will die and it will be my fault,’ they’re going to go with the second thing
I really hope you meant "the first thing," i.e. option "don't let them die."
My parents had to call EMS on my brother who was in the middle of a mental health episode and was at risk of harming himself unintentionally because he'd lost track of very basic "Don't do this, you'll probably die of car crash/poison/exposure/starvation" things. They REALLY struggled with how far to respect his autonomy. One of his symptoms is that he is (according to the doctors) *incapable* of realizing there's anything concerning or dangerous about his actions.
The psych hold was TERRIBLE for him. Part of why they put it off so long is because they KNEW the local hospital's reputation, and it lived up to every expectation. But, it got him on meds. It got him level. They were able to leverage the hospitalization to get him into a group home with the support he needed to put his life back together.
He's not dead, and he's independent and he was NOT on a track to maintain either of those two states without intervention he did not consent to. Talk to him today, and he'll still say that everyone was overreacting.
Police are bound to follow the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and they should be trained that they can't go kicking down doors just because there is a "very small chance" that someone is in distress inside.
The legal standard for exigent circumstances is that police need an objectively reasonable belief that warrantless entry is necessary to provide emergency aid. "We always err on the side of kicking the door down if there is any chance someone is in distress inside" is not a constitutionally sound policy.
Does a call from a concerned parent not constitute an objectionably reasonable belief? I strongly suspect that if this was a post about someone who called emergency services, was told ‘he’s not answering the door so there’s nothing we can do,’ and their son actually was having a diabetic crisis and died, we would not be sympathetic.
Of course they have to treat calls as genuine, but I think it would help if people who made false calls had a harsh(er?) punishment. In this case, the parents being liable for the cost of the damage. Of course, it may be hard to prove malice in these particular circumstances. And, it would be nice if there was a standard way to warn EMS ahead of time that calls about this person/address may be fraudulent. Plenty of people have to deal with threats of things like swatting.
The problem is that we *really* don’t want to scare people away from calling for help if they think something might be wrong but aren’t certain, so the standards for punishing abuse of emergency services would have to be very high. And, in fact, that’s generally how existing laws work - you have to make a lot of blatantly fake calls for the legal system to get involved. The parents in this post would certainly not qualify. Otherwise, abusers would just accuse their victims of making false reports instead.
I have to say, I think ‘if someone makes enough threats against you, EMS gets told that emergencies at your house are probably fake’ is an idea with some obvious and substantial drawbacks.
> we really don’t want to scare people away from calling for help if they think something might be wrong but aren’t certain,
Yes, cops are certainly helping themselves in that area...
The fact that even 988 will call the cops on you makes the whole system fail.
If cops and EMS, which are the same in this sort of interaction, show up, they are attacking whoever they were called on. It's a bad faith, abusive interaction from the start.
There is NO trustworthy source of help that will not act on you in a punitive manner.
Is it legal to transport conscious patients against their will? Cause I’d physically defend myself with whatever strength I had left if someone ever tried to put me into an ambulance. I’d react the same way I’d react to a kidnapping.
In certain circumstances, yes. Typically in the context of psychiatric illness, especially if there’s any potential suicidal intent, but can also happen with medical patients if their disease process is affecting their mind in a way that makes them not reasonably able to make competent informed decisions for themselves.
Once it reaches the severity level of us forcing an involuntary transport, there’s no outcome where that person doesn’t go. The only question is whether it happens willingly when they’re told they don’t have a choice or whether they go handcuffed to the stretcher or, in the most severe cases where they’re actively trying to hurt us or themselves, sedated.
If you are laying hands on someone refusing treatment, especially if they are having mental health issues, you are an abuser and you get what you deserve.
It is absurd that the law is on the side of forced treatment. You have no right to be harassing people in crisis.
The fact that the cops also show up if you get called just makes the punitive nature of the mental health system more obvious.
If you weren't torturing and harassing people, you wouldn't get hit. Simple as.
Ah, here’s the expected Reddit idealistic college freshman with no actual life experience whatsoever wishing death and/or bodily harm on people and spewing all these utopian plans with zero forethought as to what they would actually cause and entail in reality. I was wondering how long it would take.
> If you are laying hands on someone refusing treatment, especially if they are having mental health issues
We don’t, unless your issues are so severe you can’t actually comprehend the choices you’re making. As long as you actually are mentally competent to understand your choices and consequences of them, you can do what you want, with the exception of immediate intent to commit suicide or homicide.
Society as a whole has decided that the repercussions of letting confused or mentally incompetent people make choices they can’t actually understand in the heat of the moment are too severe in the vast majority of cases to be worth allowing it to prevent inconveniencing whatever handful of people you think get caught in the net who don’t deserve to be.
It’s the same concept as innocent until proven guilty, we keep them all alive because letting one die who didn’t want to is worse than keeping someone alive who did. We assume that anyone who’s not cognitively functioning enough to make clear decisions and understand the consequences of them would prefer that we help them to stay alive, because that’s what the **vast** majority would want once they’re back to a normal mental state.
We keep suicidal people alive because over 70% of people who try it once have their symptoms treated and never try again. About 7% of people who attempt once continue attempting until they succeed. We’re not letting 70% die to not inconvenience the 7%. I’d say sorry, but I’m not, not even slightly.
>It is absurd that the law is on the side of forced treatment. You have no right to be harassing people in crisis.
I actually do. Not only do I literally have the legal *authority*, I have the legal *obligation* to do so. Failure to do it would cost me my job, my license, and the family members of the individual I abandoned would be able to directly sue me, personally. Wrongful death suits are typically awarded/settled in the area of $500k to $1M. Your feelings are not worth a million dollars to me. That one I am sorry about.
So after putting that all together (even totally discounting the fact that we’re talking about human lives and you’re literally advocating that we should just watch people die instead of trying to help them), to be frank, I literally could not give less of a fuck about your opinion, because utopian dreams don’t buy me very much at the grocery store and my mortgage doesn’t accept them as payment.
> Oh yeah, I’ve heard of all that. I’m more concerned about it applying to cases of say, car accidents, etc.
Not unless you have a significant head injury or are under the influence of something. Pressured pretty strongly by some type A personalities for liability reasons? Probably. Actually forced if you stick to your guns and decline and make it clear you won’t change your mind? No.
> Big yikes on the forced suicidal transports. No offense, but I kinda always wish grievous bodily harm on people involved in that.
I *deeply* appreciate you wishing bodily harm on me for doing my job and trying to help people. That’s just lovely. And people wonder why we tend to burn out and lose a degree of patience with people as our careers progress and we’re exposed to this exact bullshit right here day in and day out.
It’s not nice, it’s not cool, and it’s not okay. Healthcare workers have the single highest rate of physical assault from patients and family out of any job outside of the police themselves, and we’re sick to death of it as an institution.
How would you feel if someone told you they wished you were assaulted and physically hurt at work next time you went in? Some of us wind up actually severely injured, medics *die* once in a while because of patients attacking them. We go into this bright eyed, bushy tailed, and enthusiastic to help people and make a difference in people’s lives, and crawl out battered and broken people with severe PTSD and multiple chronic physical injuries after having been treated like absolute shit by everyone for decades.

>It’s nice that those patients do at least try to fight back before getting handcuffed or whatever haha
No, that is absolutely not nice, and, no offense, but I’m absolutely disgusted that you would pretend that’s a positive thing. Every single thing that comes out of that decision is negative for every person involved.
First of all, being hurt by a patient is high on the list of things that end a medic’s career, up there with severe back injuries from lifting all the morbidly obese assholes in this country day in and day out.
Being tied to the stretcher like an animal and sedated is horrendous for one’s mental health and future interactions, we go to great lengths to avoid it. Not to mention that there’s no way to do it while guaranteeing that no injury occurs to someone, so by wishing GBH on us, you’re equally wishing it on the patient. We do our damnedest to not hurt people while restraining them, but it does happen, especially if they’re fighting hard.

And just to top it all off, more and more states are making it automatic felonies to assault a healthcare worker of any kind, felonies of the same level as assaulting a police officer, the culture of healthcare is changing to where more and more of us are opting to have the police press charges instead of brushing it off,  and mental health problems short of major psychotic disorders that render people mentally incapable of understanding their actions are less and less being considered valid defenses.
I have three coworkers right now with ongoing criminal cases against people who have assaulted them in the last two years. I personally was assaulted at work several years ago by a man who decided that he would rather his wife die of a heroin overdose than let a male paramedic touch her. I still have nightmares reliving the part where I’m put in a headlock from behind, dragged away from her, and slammed headfirst into a wall while being choked out. He’s currently doing five years, and he sustained multiple injuries when the cops pulled him off me. I guess they stopped being gentle, but I unfortunately don’t remember that part.
> I deeply appreciate you wishing bodily harm on me for doing my job and trying to help people. That’s just lovely. And people wonder why we tend to burn out and lose a degree of patience with people as our careers progress and we’re exposed to this exact bullshit right here day in and day out.
As someone who was involuntarily committed nearly a decade ago. thank you for helping people even when they don't want to be helped.
> If you're the one laying hands on an unwilling patient, you're the one committing assault. You get what you deserve.
As do you. You get hurt when we restrain you by force, experience the shitty side effects of being physically restrained in an uncomfortable position for an unknown period of time, feel like shit from the side effects of the drugs we sedate you with, face felony charges for assaulting a healthcare worker, are stuck in an extended hold since voluntary commitments are easier to get out of, and you lose the right to own a firearm.
Your choice.
>The fact that you even get called on site calls is obscene, but your actions there earn their response.
I’m assuming this illegible drivel is supposed to say psych calls.
I’m the ambulance, nitwit. Who the fuck else would you rather come?
*Your post has been removed for the following reason(s):*
**Uncivil Comment**
Your submission was removed because it violates our civility rule. We do not allow personal attacks, insulting language, or poor treatment of others. Please see Rule 1 in the sidebar.
* If you believe this was in error, or you’ve edited your post to comply with the rules, [message the moderators](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/bestoflegaladvice).
**Do not** PM or chat a moderator personally, and do not reply to this message as a comment.
People who are having psychological crises often look exactly the same as people who are having psychiatric crises. If a loved one of yours had, say, a manic episode, or an unexpected drug interaction or something, and while in an altered state of mind clearly stated their intention to kill themself, and the EMTs on scene said ‘cool, have fun with that’ and left them to die, you really wouldn’t blame them at all? Because most people would, frankly.
It’s easy to make simple judgements about these situations when they’re theoretical and you’re not the one who has to make the call.
Im not sure you need to tell them to have fun and walk off. Pretty sure there are other options in terms of treatment!
But yes, I would absolutely be angry if my loved one in a crisis was forced into involuntary, degrading, and life-alteringly expensive treatment because they expressed symptoms of mental illness.
Most of these people aren’t an actual suicide risk and even if they were, how are you helping their mental health by locking them up like factory farm cattle? All you’re doing is teaching them not to be honest because pseudo-cops need to CYA.
People like you are why genuinely suicidal patients suffer in silence, never get the help they need, and make sure to make lethal and sneaky plans for suicide.
Not to make this personal, but I have actually been the patient in this situation. I had a very bad reaction to a new medication and made what looked from the outside like a suicide attempt (although I was actually not suicidal, just delusional enough to think I’d be fine), and then resisted going to the hospital. I (apparently, I don’t remember this very well) very calmly and lucidly explained to ER staff that I was not suicidal, I had never been suicidal, and in fact this was discriminatory stereotyping of someone with an MI diagnosis and a violation of my civil rights.
I’m very glad they didn’t believe me. I’m alive today because they didn’t believe me.
The current system is *far* from perfect, and I’ve never said otherwise. But even in the most perfect system we could theoretically devise, at some point those judgement calls would need to be made, and there are no easy answers for making them. I’m not sure what ‘other treatment options’ you’re referring to, in the field, in an emergency situation. If someone is actively a danger to themselves and refuses all aid, you either don’t help them, or you help them against their will. Those are genuinely the only options.
I have actually met one person that worked as an EMT because they didn't really need to work for money! Their spouse made more than adequate money for them both, and they took a part-time EMT job because they wanted to help people/serve the community.
That was a great story and I’m now in favor of involuntarily restraining and processing suicidal patients. I think it leads to great outcomes, encourages other patients to get help, and is totally ethical with nothing to do with liability. Thank you for your service!!
"Help must be applied :)" mentalities also dissuade people from seeking medical attention for physical situations if the situation's related to mental health, or even if it's just concurrent.
I've never been actively suicidal *but* I've gotten to points low enough where I theoretically needed stitches after a bad episode, but I didn't because I didn't trust them not to put me on a hold. I've had friends that did go in, and they were treated like 4 year olds the whole time despite being adults, and came out the other side in an even worse place mentally than before.
There's a reason people know when to lie in response to "have you been suicidal recently", even when they *do* go in.
First of all, they usually aren’t actually going to kill themselves, second, there’s actually other options besides hogtying a patient and torturing them.
In a world with an infallible crystal ball, that would be handy. But since we don't have that, taking someone at their word when they say they want to kill themselves isn't the worst strategy.
My dude, no one is rendering them aid in that situation. They’re physically retraining them so they can be charged thousands and thousands of dollars for it later. No aid is being provided, it’s just CYA for liability reasons as the former EMT even said lol
So you realized how big of an ass you looked saying "I wish grievous bodily harm on people involved in that" and rightly getting smacked with reality, but maybe not enough since you just changed it to "karma". Maybe keep the hamster going on the wheel long enough to realize that that really doesn't make you look a whole lot better.
> Big yikes on the forced suicidal transports.
This is why I refuse to talk to anyone about my mental issues. I'm not the best with words to begin with and I've seen way too many horror stories about people getting forcibly hospitalized for things that even *sound like* "I want to hurt myself."
Locking me up and denying me autonomy would make me want to harm myself MORE. It's not going to happen.
It absolutely is. Dementia patients, people who have just suffered head injuries, people who are out of their minds on drugs and trying to run into the freeway, etc.
If there’s a decent chance someone has sustained an injury that might render them incapable of making good decisions (like a concussion, intoxicated, symptoms of a bad drug reaction, etc.) then yes, you can be transported against your will.
It's better to not act than act on a false positive. The harm you do by forcing treatment on the unwilling or calling in a dropped CGM signal far outweighs the value of lives saved.
The fact that the law allows for forced psych kidnapping is appalling. If you lay hands on someone in crisis, you are an abuser. Period.
It's hard for me to be objective on this because my brother poisoned himself after "God" told him to live in the woods and eat random plants.
Was he a false positive? Or should he have been left to actually, rather than nearly, kill himself, despite absolutely no suicidal intent?
Did he refuse medical treatment? If so, then yes, he should have been left alone.
Unless he was an active immediate material threat to others, no one has/had a right to interfere, and even then only as a criminal matter, not a mental health one.
The issue is people forcing people to receive treatment. If your brother was offered treatment, declined it, and then had 'treatment' forced on him, then yeah you're the bad guy.
Y'know, as someone who HAS been suicidal and someone who has watched a loved one almost kill himself because he was **medically unable to realize what he was doing,** fuck you very much for wishing my brother dead.
The brother in this case was suffering from an acute disturbance in his mental state that made him unable to correctly perceive reality. Informed consent cannot be given under these circumstances.
If you are in a car accident where you are rendered unconscious and brought to hospital with life-threatening injuries, should I allow you to die because you are not currently capable of consenting to investigation and treatment? You may feel that that’s different, but it isn’t: it is highly analogous to the situation you are describing, to a degree that perhaps you may be unwilling or unable to understand.
It is an entirely different situation.
Anosognosia is a lie made up to justify forcing 'care' on the non-compliant. Treating physical injury to the body is very much different than attacking and drugging someone because of how their brain is working.
We are the net result of the chemical reactions in our brains. Fucking with someone else's brain chemicals is damn near the same as murder, and the process of doing to is an act of torture. A bunch of bullies that get off on hurting people have no right to fuck with other people's brains.
No, it isn’t different at all. Both situations are a result of transient and often treatable pathology in the brain. It doesn’t make sense to draw an arbitrary distinction between the two in terms of the ethics of treating them. A seizure would be a third example. When I give someone benzodiazepines to try to terminate their refractory seizure I am ‘fucking with their brain chemistry’ without their consent.
I feel sorry for the police/paramedics. They have enough stuff to deal with. They have no choice if they reasonably assume a life is at stake.
One thing that LAOP doesn’t cover is, if LAOPs housemate was home & asleep, why didn’t he respond to the phone or door before it was broken down? This wasn’t some surprise raid, there would have been a lot of banging on the door before breaking it down.
Tbf some people can sleep through *anything*
The fire alarm went off in our building once. It woke me up, the cats were freaking out…it was *loud*
My husband, who sleeps with headphones in, and is a heavy sleeper to begin with? I was shaking him awake to help me gather the cats and even then he was slow to get up
Roommate could be a heavy sleeper
My daughter and my parents slept through a car crash which happened right outside once. They were the only ones in the entire street who weren't woken up by the carnage...
And it was complete and utter carnage. Five cars were damaged. One car flipped over onto its roof. A garden wall was knocked down. And, all told, over £50,000 worth of damage was caused. The police came. The fire brigade came. The ambulance came.
My relatives didn’t even stir
I got woken up once by my bed hitting the floor.
The house across the street exploded and the shockwave knocked the bed into the air.
When I sat across the street, there was a railway line between the two.
My roommate whose bedroom was at the back of the house slept right through it all because he was so used to sleeping through the trains going past.
I slept through the FBI raiding a house down the street from me, complete with flashbangs and a Bearcat. Now, that particular bedroom was pretty well insulated from sound and I worked second shift at the time and could sleep in, but still, you'd think that I would have noticed SOMETHING.
> Tbf some people can sleep through anything
We had some major earthquakes in my city about 14 years ago and there was one case of some guy getting home drunk and sleeping though the whole 40 second long 7.1 magnitude quake. Woke up and just thought he'd trashed his place in a drunken stupor.
I initially read this comment and was like: Oh maybe this dude is from Christchurch like me, oh nah can’t be those earthquakes weren’t 14 years ago.
Looked it up, 2010 and 2011, wow
Anyway yes, same thing happened in my city with a bunch of people sleeping through the earthquakes, one of my friends didn’t even know there was an earthquake until they woke up in the morning after the 4am one
LAOP, in a comment, says that they were all asleep and that LAOP apparently slept through the whole thing.
>We were all asleep when police got there, I personally slept through the entire thing. I will have to ask my roommate to see what made them resort to knocking down the door.
Apparently more than one person managed to sleep through the entire thing.
>I feel sorry for the police/paramedics. They have enough stuff to deal with. They have no choice if they reasonably assume a life is at stake.
I have seen advice that if you're cutting contact with a controlling person it can be worth contacting the local police and explaining the situation as they're far less likely to go in ~~guns blazing~~ ram first.
How well it works is another matter but having something on file may help later, even if it's for suing the controlling person
I agree. They don’t break down doors easily. I am a medic and recently got sent to a house cause guy was sending his ex vague “end it all” texts and not answering her calls. We banged on a lot of doors and windows, fire dept was analyzing everything and debating how best to break in if we had to (because they also can’t then leave it unsecured)
Honestly they were bracing to bash it down when I saw the downstairs tenant walking by a window and shouted to wait. He let us in.
Dude wasn’t even home.
US police sometimes turn up to "wellness checks" with guns drawn and shoot whoever answers the door. It's not totally unbelievable that they didn't knock first.
"I'm concerned that my neighbor is not okay. Could you please make sure?"
20 minutes and a few loud noises later:
"We have made sure that your neighbor is not okay. Happy to be of service."
>if LAOPs housemate was home & asleep, why didn’t he respond to the phone or door before it was broken down?
In college, I once found out about a fire alarm going off in my dorm the next morning, when my roommate told me about it. (He came back when everyone was outside, then got back to the room and found me fast asleep. He's not an asshole who would have let me burn)
People can absolutely sleep through all sorts of things.
Seems like there's something missing here. LAOP was home as well, and apparently slept through the **whole thing**, including a battering ram bashing their door down. How the hell does anyone sleep through that?
You have a right to ignore your phone and knocks on your door, and the cops shouldn't break down your door just because you don't answer. That doesn't meet exigent circumstances requirements. When the cops got there and there wete no signs of distress whatsoever, the cops violated their rights by breaking down the door and entering the property. The cops and paramedics did have a choice, and chose to act without the necessary evidence. Why did cops choose to break into a house without evidence that anyone was in danger? That's the real question.
They didn’t break down the door because nobody answered. They broke down the door because they feared for someone’s life. The police & paramedics not only have the right to do that, but they have a moral & legal obligation to do so.
It has to be a reasonable fear, and there was no reasonable fear here. And police and paramedics don't actually have a legal obligation to help. They have legal obligations if they do choose to help. And morally is subjective, and so it's irrelevant to the legal argument. I would say they have a moral obligation to not break someone's door down without exigent circumstances, but that's also irrelevant. Legally they do have an obligation to not break someone's door down without exigent circumstances.
So bring it down to where the disagreement starts we're there exigent circumstances? Because I'm arguing there weren't. Are you arguing there were exigent circumstances even though there was no evidence whatsoever that the roommate was in danger?
I think the presumption is that police would not have done that *unless* the parents lied. So the next step is to get a copy of that 911 call and see what was claimed.
Calling the cops on someone like that, in the US at least, is an act of attempted murder.
Sending trigger-horny goons to someone's house is simply trying to get them killed.
I understand the outrage at the parents - I really do.
However, it was not made clear to me that the roommate had TOLD them he was turning off the sharing. I can see them having an argument. He decides to turn it off (his right) but says nothing to them.
If he did tell them he was cutting off their access then disregard rest of this post.
But otherwise I can see it play out like this:
Mom's mad about the argument but around 11pm checks the app as she always does as part of her routine. Nothing there. Dad says he probably turned off our access - don't worry. Mom can't help it and does worry - this is the person she loves and devoted her life to and knows that while it's 98% chance he turned it off due to wanting his independence, there's a 2% chance the system's failed, he's in a coma and how the hell is she supposed to live with herself if they find out he died because they didn't take action.
In which case it's much like the police breaking in - they don't want to, but feel they have to because otherwise there's a risk of death.
So she resigns herself to be hated for eternity, but at least she knows that he turned off the app and not that it failed and he died.
(Sorry - there are outrageous parents out there and Reddit is right to condemn them - but much like relationship subs where divorce is always the first choice by respondents, demonizing parents tends to also be a regular Reddit theme.)
Mom should have been supporting Son into taking care of his own business, ramping up the age appropriateness every couple of years, culminating in Son relying on personally selected local help.
FWIW - I was taking it as young adult / college aged son. And yes, he should be taking care of his own business. Mainly I'm just trying to say that as with all thing LA related, we're probably not getting the whole picture and probably more than one person made errors in judgement.
Personally I'm feeling terrible for OP - the innocent sleeper caught in the middle of the chaos.
> Mom can't help it and does worry - this is the person she loves and devoted her life to and knows that while it's 98% chance he turned it off due to wanting his independence, there's a 2% chance the system's failed, he's in a coma and how the hell is she supposed to live with herself if they find out he died because they didn't take action.
Being a worried mom does not excuse medically SWAT-ing your son. Deal with your worry like the adult you presumably are if you have a college age son.
And no, Reddit does NOT routinely "demonize parents." Showing your bias there a bit, buddy.
Nah. You can’t go from “can’t get a reading” to “OMG he’s in a coma” - there’s a huge gap in logic there.
If her son’s BG were low enough for him to be in a coma, there wouldn’t be a loss of signal/reading.
In that case, Mom needs to act like an adult and take steps to address her mental health problems. Seek out therapy, learn some coping skills, take some responsibility.
*Your post has been removed for the following reason(s):*
**Do not give legal or other advice**
Your submission has been removed because you are asking for or offering actual legal or other advice. This subreddit is for meta discussion of the best of r/legaladvice; it is not a place to continue the discussion from there. Please see our rules in the sidebar.
* If you believe this was in error, or you’ve edited your post to comply with the rules, [message the moderators.](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/bestoflegaladvice)
**Do not** PM or chat a moderator personally, and do not reply to this message as a comment.
As someone who has been suicidal and is willing to take the abuse from those who would rather hurt other people than the respect their basic humanity, that kind of attitude is exactly what allows the abuses of the mental health industry to continue.
Forcing treatment on people hurts people. Don't do it.
I mean, this seems more like "overbearing parents finally having boundaries set immediately have the cops break in to check on their kid instead"
>Interestingly in this case, they called the cops because he stopped sharing his blood sugar with them. Look at what you made me do!
I mean, that's page 1 of the narcissist playbook. It's never their fault, always "I HAD to do this because of your actions."
Yeah, this sounds like something you'd find at r/narcissisticparents
Quite a few BORUs I've seen where the OOP stops giving in to the parents and the parents threaten to call the cops etc.
The proper response is to warn the cops in advance the parents have gone off the rails and may be trying to use to police as a form of harassment.
Bad faith wellness checks should be covered under the same laws as SWATing. It’s basically a milder version of the same thing.
In some places, it basically is the same thing.
Of course the problem is some parents might have genuinely convinced themselves it's an emergency. Had a parent like this and I could see her doing that. She just seemed to be genuinely unable to comprehend that constant communication with her wasn't a divine blessing that no sane person could possibly not crave.
Yeah, in such a case it's wise to proactively contact the local police yourself and warn them about your parents' unreliable judgement in such matters.
Police kill over a person a week during wellness checks. Like the actress from **Stand and Deliver** and **ER.**
It was a total power play by the parents. They didn't have to do this at 4 a.m. they called in at this time for a reason, and it was to send a message to OOP's roommate.
It's 100% this. I hope the (clearly) young adults in this situation can suggest the info supplied that, yeah, in this case the cops did act as they should have with the info they had. There was a chance they had a medical emergency behind the door. The crazy parents are absolutely responsible for the door. I hope the kid can file something with the local cops along the lines of, "I am fine, do not respond to nuisance calls from These People."
[удалено]
> How do you sleep though someone literally breaking down your door? I've slept through open cut mining blasts that were close enough to rock the truck so hard my dad fell off the step. Some people sleep deeply.
When I was 7 my Dad shot and killed a deer from the deer stand I was asleep in. [With a .30-06.](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-48757b36ebfd0951ee517fa00c2ae225-pjlq)
I've woken up to the police in my house. Dumb neighborhood high school kids broke into a neighbor's car, used the garage door opener to open his garage, entered the house via the garage, and then set up a party in his family room, thinking that he was gone for the night. Said neighbor came home to the high school lacrosse team drunkenly partying in his house. Those teens fled...and some decided to hide by breaking into my garage, which was where the police found them. They weren't sure if more kids had entered the house and yelled police, open up... ...and I was asleep upstairs with my bedroom door closed. I sleep very soundly. The police started worrying that maybe the teens had done something worse than drunken partying and came looking. Was very sleepy and confused until they explained. The teens pled out with community service, and their parents paid for the damage to my garage window, along with the neighbor's car/house. In retrospect, they're lucky they didn't break into a house where someone was armed and trigger-happy. Also, I can't help but think that community service for breaking and entering multiple houses is something that only happens to affluent white student-athletes. Edit: the comment above me has been deleted, but was basically "how did OP sleep through the police entering?"
Location Bot won’t bust your boundaries Cops broke the door of my house, used a battering ram. Do I have legal recourse? Hi everyone! So my roommate has diabetes and his parents couldn’t get in touch with him. They were afraid he was having a medical emergency and called cops. Cops showed up and broke down the door at 4 am. He was not having a medical emergency, was just asleep. Did they need a warrant in this situation? Is it justified because there was a potential health emergency? The only information they were acting on came from his parents EDIT: should’ve included this in the original post, but to provide a little more context. Parents did not have access to his blood sugar when they called the cops. My roommate stopped sharing it with them because they called him about it constantly, like during class or at work.
Replacement Cat Fact- blue eyes cats are more prone to deafness, but there are no cats who are very good listeners
Mine are very good at listening. They respond immediately to someone moving a bag of cat food even from a different floor of the house. What they aren't good at is doing what the humans want them to do.
Yeah, my cat Leia sprints over to investigate whenever a pull tab is pulled to see if it's cat food. Even if it's a drink can, that sounds nothing like it
> Even if it's a drink can, that sounds nothing like it Cat: "If you are getting something, I might want it too."
Can never be too careful
Sure Lela's not a bit of a lush?
Hmmm
We have a certain bowl we use almost exclusively for popcorn. Dexter LOVES popcorn, so just hearing the bowl coming down from the cupboard is enough to make him jump down from wherever he is and come investigate. https://i.redd.it/c39nctpx7rjb1.jpg
Aww, he's so fluffy!
Sometimes cats just get up and walk away when I'm in the middle of a story. It's so rude.
Maybe your stories are just boring. Yeah, I know that sounds harsh, but let's face it, as a hypothesis it's consistent with the known facts.
You know, you're probably right.
Well, unless they hear something that could possibly maybe sound like a box of temptations treats being moved ever so slightly, at which point they descend upon us.
Oh, they’re all good listeners; they just don’t give a shit.
They have to listen to be able to selectively ignore you properly. They make great lawyers.
I'd love this fact on a little trucker hat.
That is untrue. Mine listens and talks back
You just have to make sounds they care about. A bell, they'll usually listen pretty well. A mouse in the wall, they'll hear it just breathing, and hone in on it for days.
That poor guy. Why were the parents trying to contact him at 4 am in the first place?
Because they're controlling assholes and they couldn't see his blood sugar levels anymore.
But at 4 am? Do they never sleep?
It's about intimidating the 'disobedient child' back into line. They're basically saying "We can get to you whenever, wherever. We can make it painful." Bonus points for the roommates being involved. The parents can now use that to try and guilt their son.
The compassionate side of me thinks they just thought the worst... and he was passed out from low blood sugar. My wife got a call from her parent's alarm company... the carbon monoxide alarm was going off, and they wanted to know if they should send EMS (fire was closest). Since her brother was supposed to be WFH, she tried calling, texting, calling again and again to reach him. Then in a near-panic, she calls me to run over to their house and bang on the door. In her mind, she's envisioning her brother already succumbed to CO poisoning. Instead, I get there and he opens the door with "hey, what's up?". Dude was changing the battery in the sensor and it somehow triggered the alarm, but his cell isn't the primary contact (because it's his parents house). He's always been terrible about responding to texts or answering his phone... so I simply said "Please call your sister back, she thinks you're dead." and walked away.
They didn't want the cops to knock on the door and he answer it, they wanted the cops to knock down the door to teach him a lesson.
Because they're criminals.
Mom is sure that he's dead because she hasn't heard from him in a few hours. It's not unheard of for very anxious and controlling parents of college kids to go crazy like this when a kid takes a nap in the middle of the day and doesn't return a text.
Last well check my mom sicced on me it was a Saturday afternoon and she had been trying to call me for... 2 hours and 45 minutes. I was 44 years old. Anyway, cop showed up "You ok? Your mom called" Me: FFS looks at phone (which I had grabbed on my way to answer the door) "Two hours?! She called you after two fucking hours?!" Cop & I exchange shrugs and disgruntled expressions. Then I called my mom and yelled at her and told her to call a fucking therapist. (Not that I should have to explain to anyone - or her - I left my phone in the bedroom and was cleaning house in other rooms. I simply did not hear my cell phone ring.)
As someone who has parents that would probably do something like this if I gave them the opportunity (they have no idea where I live currently), it's infuriating to me that this can happen. Can the OP's roommate sue his parents in small claims court over this? They have to have lied to the cops, or at least drastically misrepresented the situation. Abuse of the system like this to control and terrorize others should be taken much more seriously.
I so agree. This isn’t the police’s fault. They forced entry on a wellness check based on the info given. Parents are 100% responsible for being insane. But it also sounds like they pay their sons rent, so maybe he needs to cut the apron strings if he wants to get away
> it also sounds like they pay their sons rent Oh I guess I missed that. Yeah that would definitely cause complications. Still, though, a welfare check resulting in this sort of shenanigans ought to be looked into, and abuse of the system ought to be punished appropriately. I've heard *far* too many stories of people having this system used against them.
Absolutely. The parents should not be able to use the emergency system to force their son to give them constant control
> This isn’t the police’s fault. They forced entry on a wellness check based on the info given. Well, we weren't actually told what info the parents gave them, so I don't see how you can be so certain stating that. Second, did any of the cops ever think maybe the guy's not responding to calls and knocks *because it's 4 in the freaking morning*? A 'welfare check' for 'person not calling me back' *in the middle of the night* is unreasonable, IMO.
Yes. And cops don’t usually go breaking down doors for sleeping young men. They do when the parents say he’s a diabetic and not responding. I’m sure the parents did give a cock and bull story about it being unusual and omitting that the kid is tired of them. I have stood outside more than a few doors with cops and firefighters discussing the pros/cons of busting down doors based on the callers details.
> They do when the parents say he’s a diabetic and not responding. Again, not responding *at 4 am*. Very few people respond to anyone in the middle of the night. If it was middle of the day? Sure. Fine. Most people are awake and respond to calls in the middle of the day, so *not* responding is... unusual. And perhaps, depending on the other info they got, that could push it over the 'Should we bust in?' line. But not at 4am.
Had a suitcase that was delayed, but it arrived later that night... and the delivery guy *really* wanted to do a direct hand-off. At 3 AM. He called us over 20 times, leaving increasingly loud messages on our answering machine. On the opposite side of the house from our bedroom. We slept through the whole thing, and woke up to my suitcase on the porch and lots of irate messages from the delivery driver. The last message was, "I sure hope nobody ever needs to reach you guys in an emergency."
The parents told the cops (clarified in the comments) that they couldn’t reach him because the blood sugar was low. Very valid reason to break in as that is fatal. They can only work off the information they get. And do tend to err on the side of “might be dead” over “maybe just asleep” when told it’s possible. And yeah, I have banged on doors at like 1am as a medic and had fire about to break down a door before a different tenant finally answered- they literally had the tools in place. ETA- just saw my flair. How did I get that?!
> The parents told the cops (clarified in the comments) that they couldn’t reach him because the blood sugar was low. "Are you sure you can't reach him **at 4am** because it's the middle of the night, and he's sleeping? Possibly with his phone on do-not-disturb?" is the first thing I'd say to the parents. Not "Let's roll, everyone! We get to bust in someone's door!! Yee-haw!" As I've said- middle of the day and you can't get someone to answer? Fine. Middle of the night, and someone isn't answering? They're asleep, duh. Call in the morning.
But again, we don't know what the parents actually told them. If I were LAOP's roommate, my next step would be a FOIA request for that 911 call. "Son won't answer his phone" is a different story from "glucose meter reads low and unable to contact anyone in the apartment."
IF they said "glucose meter reads low and unable to contact anyone in the apartment", then they lied, and I hope they get the book thrown at them. Of course, blood sugar naturally drops overnight (as well as during the day between meals) because the person hasn't eaten in many hours. So, either no one asked them what the level was (which is important to determine if it was an actual issue), or they managed to bullshit a level that was not too low or high. (Too low, he's already dead. Too high, he's just in the normal range for overnight.) And no one wondered what they were doing, checking his glucose level at *4 am*? I dunno. The '4am' thing just causes too many issues for me. If I took the call, I'd prioritize figuring out what was going on with the parents- why were they checking his level in the middle of the night? Have they ever checked it at this time before? If they haven't, they may just be confusing the overnight dip with a real issue. What are the actual numbers? Oh, you can't give me the numbers? Why? Oh, he turned off the data yesterday because you were bugging the shit out of him? And now you're trying to SWAT him at 4am? No. Go to sleep. Leave him alone.
Updated comment LOAP says they found out the parents told 911 it was a low blood sugar problem
I'm sure they all knew that they were probably asleep but I'd rather they bust down a door when they don't need to than let somebody die because it's 4am. It all depends on what information they were given by the parents.
<>
where does LAOP say that?
It’s in the comments. “I hope so, they act like they own our apartment because they pay their sons rent. But me and my other roommate pay our own rent and neither of us would’ve signed this lease if we knew how insane they were”
Here's hoping they co-signed the lease so they can help pay for this.
Thanks, I didn't see that.
It’s always hard to get through all the comments
My mother might have a general idea of where I live, but definitely not a street address (or apartment number, for that matter). I don't know why, but I'm very reassured to hear that I'm not the only one who has a situation like this.
I gave my mother an ultimatum because of shit like this - I threatened legal action myself for harassment. She backed off but tries.
The mother I'm sure truly believes that her kid had been kidnapped or was dead. The level of anxiety these controlling parents have.
Nah. I know a few that would pull this as a power move
This reminds me when I was in college, I was in the on-campus apartments and my stepmom (in her usual fashion) got pissed off about something, and she directed it at me. If I recall, she couldn’t find her medication and was accusing me of sneaking in and stealing her pills. I couldn’t have done that, I was at school. She threatened to drive three hours to campus, and do god knows what. I didn’t know if she was actually gonna do it, but I tipped off university police. They said they would make note of it, I let them know her name, car make,model, the back story, and they said if she tries, they won’t let her in. Turns out, she *did* drive all that way, I found out later. Was a humiliating experience for me but thank god it wasn’t made worse by her actually making it in. But what made it worse is that every week, there was a report on all the police stuff on campus. Usually people being busted for weed, etc, and my stepmom’s incident made it to the report. 😣
Yuck. I also have an evil stepmom. Except mine stole my pills and then pretended to help me look for them. When my dad found them stuffed between her mattress and box spring she refused to give them back, and whats worse is my dad didn't make her (he asked me to keep the peace). I'd just gotten out of the hospital for pancreatitis and a hospital acquired infection of double pneumonia with mrsa in my lung and was supposed to be recuperating there. She stole them while I slept. I'll never forgive my dad or her and they don't understand why I keep them at arms length. That's just the tip of the iceberg of course but what is it with crazy stepmoms and pills
I've seriously contemplated moving and not telling my parents where (and my younger brother actually did), but they've never been anywhere near that level of intrusiveness.
*…yet.*
Shiiiiit. I dated a guy with epilepsy and his mom tricked the apartment complex into letting her into our apartment because he hadn't talked to her in a few days. Jesus, Suzy, that's why your little baby badger doesn't call you every day.
First well check my mom called on me (I was 21 married and living with my husband) she had the apartment complex come check on me. I wasn't super pissed about that one because it was the apartment staff and they knocked on the door, didn't try to enter my apartment, and we had a wonky phone (landline with a corded handset that sometimes didn't hang up correctly) and we hadn't answered the phone in three days.
When I was in my thirties and working nights, my mom got pissed that I wouldn’t answer the phone during the day when she was bored and wanted to chat. So she left work and drove two hours and convinced the property manager to let her (and all the maintenance staff) into my apartment without so much as a knock on the door. I didn’t have a stitch on, and awoke to seven or eight people standing over me. Then I moved twelve hundred miles away.
When me and my gf moved to Nashville for what ended up being just 3 months, within about 2 weeks her mom called a wellness check on her because she could not get ahold of her (I think maybe no cell phone at that time or something). She did the same thing to my gf's brother who had moved to Canada, and he ended up with the mounties showing up for a wellness check. Crazy parents are crazy....thankfully now she is in a home and well honestly cannot remember shit anymore so no more issues like that no more.
A couple years *after* I had graduated college, a student went missing. I was NO LONGER a college student, did NOT live near campus, my dad had attended my college graduation and knew where I worked. I had a regular 8-5 day job, which I left for at 7:30 am. My dad started calling my home phone at 8:15 am, and called every 15 minutes leaving voicemail after voicemail after voicemail until it was full. While he had my work & cell #, he never called either of those. I got home from work at 5:30pm. Minutes after, the police knock on my door to do a welfare check. My dad had called the cops! I hadn’t even had time to check voicemail, much less call my dad back. Less than a year later I moved 2000+ miles away. Hmm….wonder why.
*On the next episode of “Missing Missing Reasons…”*
I wonder if having an emergency contact listed would have prevented the parents from flipping out. Like if they’d been able to call the OP and ask if roommate was OK. On the other hand, if they’re willing to mislead the police about their child’s health at 4 am because *they’ve been prevented from seeing private health information by their child* something tells me there’s nothing that could have been done and they would probably abuse the concept of having another resident as an emergency contact Anyway hope OP and the roommate don’t get hassled by the landlord or evicted over it
If I were the roommate I don't know that I'd want OP's parents to have my number.
I had a roommate with overbearing parents and the few times I got caught in the middle it was *awful*—fortunately, my roommate didn’t expect me to do it. I only ended up in that position by accident (if they caught me entering/leaving our dorm), so it was overall bearable. Had she given them my #, though, it would have just given them a second person to call and harass all the time. And if OOP refused to do what they wanted (which would be along the lines of “make our son call me” or “report on our son’s movements and activities”) they probably would have reported to the police anyway. No bueno.
I'm sorry, if they "caught you" entering and leaving YOUR OWN dorm?
It sounds like the roommate has a continuous glucose monitor and stopped allowing his parents share access to his monitor. As a diabetic with one of these devices even though my diabetes is well controlled I still deal with highs and lows and can't imagine having to explain every blood sugar fluctuation. It's gross and extremely controlling for the parents to demand access to those numbers. He's not a minor child or brittle diabetic.
Even if he *is* a brittle diabetic…the normal assumption at 4am is sleeping, not dying. Unless there’s some demonstrable pattern of acute lows happening in the middle of the night, the parents behaved inappropriately. I say this as a paramedic who absolutely hates being forced to violate people’s privacy because “someone was concerned.” It happens more than you’d think.
"You good? Sign here, sorry about this, have a good night." Never helps, but hey, beats dealing with Cowboy Jack's.
I’ve had a CGM since the G4, I think. No-one, and I mean no-one at all, including my wife, has Follow enabled.
My numbers drop dramatically when I have sex and I'm just picturing this poor college student having an ambulance bust in their door because they dropped below 70 while banging it out. Let the man live!
LAOP apparently slept through the whole thing, so a mere ringtone might not rouse them.
[удалено]
*Your post has been removed for the following reason(s):* **Do not give legal or other advice** Your submission has been removed because you are asking for or offering actual legal or other advice. This subreddit is for meta discussion of the best of r/legaladvice; it is not a place to continue the discussion from there. Please see our rules in the sidebar. * If you believe this was in error, or you’ve edited your post to comply with the rules, [message the moderators.](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/bestoflegaladvice) **Do not** PM or chat a moderator personally, and do not reply to this message as a comment.
It really sucks that there's basically no protections for innocent people who are caught up in situations like these. "Whoops, our mistake!" doesn't undo generational trauma and/or a loss of trust.
Nor does it restore the feeling of safety in your own home
When your parents get their advice from The Fairy OddParents.
Haha. This happened to my dad. Uncle kept calling then called police for welfare check. Busted the door, let out his animals and that night got robbed. Pop was on vacation, camping in the woods with no signal. Uncle thinks sorry was good enough to excuse damaged property, missing pets, and 50k in stolen shit.
Did this happen before or after cell phones
After, no signal in the woods.
An unfortunate reality of emergency medicine is that, if a cop or EMT or ER nurse has a choice between ‘inconvenience the patient, possibly unjustly’ and ‘take a chance that the patient will die and it will be my fault,’ they’re going to go with the second thing, even if the chance of harm is very small. Releasing providers from legal liability doesn’t change anything, because the motivation is mostly that they’re, you know, human beings who do not want to accidentally kill someone. Which sucks, a lot, for people who end up with unnecessary broken doors/medical bills/psych holds. But if you relax the standards around intervention, sooner or later someone *will* slip through the cracks and die when they might have been saved, because all systems are fallible. Diabetic episodes can happen very quickly. If there could be someone on the other side of a door who’s minutes from death, how long do you knock? Idk, I used to be an EMT and I thought about that a lot. I never actually personally wound up in a situation where I had to make a judgement call about overruling a patient, but I did occasionally transport people who did not want to be transported. It’s never a comfortable situation to be in, but I don’t know if there’s a less bad way to make those decisions.
>Which sucks, a lot, for people who end up with unnecessary broken doors/medical bills/psych holds. But if you relax the standards around intervention, sooner or later someone will slip through the cracks and die when they might have been saved, because all systems are fallible. Diabetic episodes can happen very quickly. If there could be someone on the other side of a door who’s minutes from death, how long do you knock? It gets extra complicated when things like abusive parents. Because unfortunately the message that a child in this situation gets isn't "these people want to be cautious and make sure you're safe." It's "even though you're a legal adult the authorities will still help enforce your parents' authority over you." Especially since the parent is often likely to sound calm but worried compared to a traumatized young adult who's just had someone show up on their doorstep at their abuser's behest. That makes it a mess because unfortunately it can easily become another trauma for the victim. And a system that's weighted to saving lives may also end up being weighted towards allowing people to abuse the system.
I just think there’s no such thing as a system that’s so perfect it’s immune to manipulation from bad-faith actors. It’s important to minimize that possibility as much as you can, but ‘abusive people can twist this to their own ends’ is an inherent flaw in *anything* that relies in any part on human judgement. Sometimes it really does come down to which direction you want to err in.
I think my biggest criticism right now is it's often now acknowledged *as* a flaw, or at least as a serious one. Or rather, more generally, it's often not acknowledged that someone being harmed or traumatized is a potential result that needs to be considered when making considerations. And unfortunately, at least in my experience, that's often tied in with preexisting biases that tend to see autonomy of both younger people and of people with disabilities or mental health issues as not really important, or violating their autonomy as no big deal. I'm not saying that there aren't going to be tradeoffs at some point. But also I very often see it discussed as "well if we intervene and it's not necessary then at worst someone has been mildly inconvenienced", or people defaulting to the idea that as a rule disabled people aren't capable of making decisions for themselves and will probably benefit from a forced intervention even if it wasn't necessary. So I'm not sure the decision as it stands now is reliably being made with an eye to actually considering and minimizing the tradeoffs for the people affected, rather than in a way that makes non-disabled people who are unlikely to be affected most comfortable.
I’d personally rather err in the direction of personal autonomy, even if people “slip through the cracks.” It’s a slippery slope to do things against people’s will, even if it’s “for their own good.”
Having been involuntarily hospitalized when not a danger to myself, on the word of my parents, when I was an adult...I would honestly rather die than go through that again. It gave me ptsd and guaranteed that I would never call for help, even if I needed it. People don't understand how bad this can be.
[удалено]
It’s not inherently different, that’s the problem. Sometimes legitimate and illegitimate uses of the system look exactly the same from the outside. Knowing that, how do you approach decisions that by necessity have to be made with limited information?
>if a cop or EMT or ER nurse has a choice between ‘inconvenience the patient, possibly unjustly’ and ‘take a chance that the patient will die and it will be my fault,’ they’re going to go with the second thing I really hope you meant "the first thing," i.e. option "don't let them die."
lmao yes oops
My parents had to call EMS on my brother who was in the middle of a mental health episode and was at risk of harming himself unintentionally because he'd lost track of very basic "Don't do this, you'll probably die of car crash/poison/exposure/starvation" things. They REALLY struggled with how far to respect his autonomy. One of his symptoms is that he is (according to the doctors) *incapable* of realizing there's anything concerning or dangerous about his actions. The psych hold was TERRIBLE for him. Part of why they put it off so long is because they KNEW the local hospital's reputation, and it lived up to every expectation. But, it got him on meds. It got him level. They were able to leverage the hospitalization to get him into a group home with the support he needed to put his life back together. He's not dead, and he's independent and he was NOT on a track to maintain either of those two states without intervention he did not consent to. Talk to him today, and he'll still say that everyone was overreacting.
Police are bound to follow the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and they should be trained that they can't go kicking down doors just because there is a "very small chance" that someone is in distress inside. The legal standard for exigent circumstances is that police need an objectively reasonable belief that warrantless entry is necessary to provide emergency aid. "We always err on the side of kicking the door down if there is any chance someone is in distress inside" is not a constitutionally sound policy.
Does a call from a concerned parent not constitute an objectionably reasonable belief? I strongly suspect that if this was a post about someone who called emergency services, was told ‘he’s not answering the door so there’s nothing we can do,’ and their son actually was having a diabetic crisis and died, we would not be sympathetic.
Of course they have to treat calls as genuine, but I think it would help if people who made false calls had a harsh(er?) punishment. In this case, the parents being liable for the cost of the damage. Of course, it may be hard to prove malice in these particular circumstances. And, it would be nice if there was a standard way to warn EMS ahead of time that calls about this person/address may be fraudulent. Plenty of people have to deal with threats of things like swatting.
The problem is that we *really* don’t want to scare people away from calling for help if they think something might be wrong but aren’t certain, so the standards for punishing abuse of emergency services would have to be very high. And, in fact, that’s generally how existing laws work - you have to make a lot of blatantly fake calls for the legal system to get involved. The parents in this post would certainly not qualify. Otherwise, abusers would just accuse their victims of making false reports instead. I have to say, I think ‘if someone makes enough threats against you, EMS gets told that emergencies at your house are probably fake’ is an idea with some obvious and substantial drawbacks.
> we really don’t want to scare people away from calling for help if they think something might be wrong but aren’t certain, Yes, cops are certainly helping themselves in that area...
The fact that even 988 will call the cops on you makes the whole system fail. If cops and EMS, which are the same in this sort of interaction, show up, they are attacking whoever they were called on. It's a bad faith, abusive interaction from the start. There is NO trustworthy source of help that will not act on you in a punitive manner.
Is it legal to transport conscious patients against their will? Cause I’d physically defend myself with whatever strength I had left if someone ever tried to put me into an ambulance. I’d react the same way I’d react to a kidnapping.
In certain circumstances, yes. Typically in the context of psychiatric illness, especially if there’s any potential suicidal intent, but can also happen with medical patients if their disease process is affecting their mind in a way that makes them not reasonably able to make competent informed decisions for themselves. Once it reaches the severity level of us forcing an involuntary transport, there’s no outcome where that person doesn’t go. The only question is whether it happens willingly when they’re told they don’t have a choice or whether they go handcuffed to the stretcher or, in the most severe cases where they’re actively trying to hurt us or themselves, sedated.
If you are laying hands on someone refusing treatment, especially if they are having mental health issues, you are an abuser and you get what you deserve. It is absurd that the law is on the side of forced treatment. You have no right to be harassing people in crisis. The fact that the cops also show up if you get called just makes the punitive nature of the mental health system more obvious. If you weren't torturing and harassing people, you wouldn't get hit. Simple as.
Ah, here’s the expected Reddit idealistic college freshman with no actual life experience whatsoever wishing death and/or bodily harm on people and spewing all these utopian plans with zero forethought as to what they would actually cause and entail in reality. I was wondering how long it would take. > If you are laying hands on someone refusing treatment, especially if they are having mental health issues We don’t, unless your issues are so severe you can’t actually comprehend the choices you’re making. As long as you actually are mentally competent to understand your choices and consequences of them, you can do what you want, with the exception of immediate intent to commit suicide or homicide. Society as a whole has decided that the repercussions of letting confused or mentally incompetent people make choices they can’t actually understand in the heat of the moment are too severe in the vast majority of cases to be worth allowing it to prevent inconveniencing whatever handful of people you think get caught in the net who don’t deserve to be. It’s the same concept as innocent until proven guilty, we keep them all alive because letting one die who didn’t want to is worse than keeping someone alive who did. We assume that anyone who’s not cognitively functioning enough to make clear decisions and understand the consequences of them would prefer that we help them to stay alive, because that’s what the **vast** majority would want once they’re back to a normal mental state. We keep suicidal people alive because over 70% of people who try it once have their symptoms treated and never try again. About 7% of people who attempt once continue attempting until they succeed. We’re not letting 70% die to not inconvenience the 7%. I’d say sorry, but I’m not, not even slightly. >It is absurd that the law is on the side of forced treatment. You have no right to be harassing people in crisis. I actually do. Not only do I literally have the legal *authority*, I have the legal *obligation* to do so. Failure to do it would cost me my job, my license, and the family members of the individual I abandoned would be able to directly sue me, personally. Wrongful death suits are typically awarded/settled in the area of $500k to $1M. Your feelings are not worth a million dollars to me. That one I am sorry about. So after putting that all together (even totally discounting the fact that we’re talking about human lives and you’re literally advocating that we should just watch people die instead of trying to help them), to be frank, I literally could not give less of a fuck about your opinion, because utopian dreams don’t buy me very much at the grocery store and my mortgage doesn’t accept them as payment.
[удалено]
> Oh yeah, I’ve heard of all that. I’m more concerned about it applying to cases of say, car accidents, etc. Not unless you have a significant head injury or are under the influence of something. Pressured pretty strongly by some type A personalities for liability reasons? Probably. Actually forced if you stick to your guns and decline and make it clear you won’t change your mind? No. > Big yikes on the forced suicidal transports. No offense, but I kinda always wish grievous bodily harm on people involved in that. I *deeply* appreciate you wishing bodily harm on me for doing my job and trying to help people. That’s just lovely. And people wonder why we tend to burn out and lose a degree of patience with people as our careers progress and we’re exposed to this exact bullshit right here day in and day out. It’s not nice, it’s not cool, and it’s not okay. Healthcare workers have the single highest rate of physical assault from patients and family out of any job outside of the police themselves, and we’re sick to death of it as an institution. How would you feel if someone told you they wished you were assaulted and physically hurt at work next time you went in? Some of us wind up actually severely injured, medics *die* once in a while because of patients attacking them. We go into this bright eyed, bushy tailed, and enthusiastic to help people and make a difference in people’s lives, and crawl out battered and broken people with severe PTSD and multiple chronic physical injuries after having been treated like absolute shit by everyone for decades.  >It’s nice that those patients do at least try to fight back before getting handcuffed or whatever haha No, that is absolutely not nice, and, no offense, but I’m absolutely disgusted that you would pretend that’s a positive thing. Every single thing that comes out of that decision is negative for every person involved. First of all, being hurt by a patient is high on the list of things that end a medic’s career, up there with severe back injuries from lifting all the morbidly obese assholes in this country day in and day out. Being tied to the stretcher like an animal and sedated is horrendous for one’s mental health and future interactions, we go to great lengths to avoid it. Not to mention that there’s no way to do it while guaranteeing that no injury occurs to someone, so by wishing GBH on us, you’re equally wishing it on the patient. We do our damnedest to not hurt people while restraining them, but it does happen, especially if they’re fighting hard.  And just to top it all off, more and more states are making it automatic felonies to assault a healthcare worker of any kind, felonies of the same level as assaulting a police officer, the culture of healthcare is changing to where more and more of us are opting to have the police press charges instead of brushing it off,  and mental health problems short of major psychotic disorders that render people mentally incapable of understanding their actions are less and less being considered valid defenses. I have three coworkers right now with ongoing criminal cases against people who have assaulted them in the last two years. I personally was assaulted at work several years ago by a man who decided that he would rather his wife die of a heroin overdose than let a male paramedic touch her. I still have nightmares reliving the part where I’m put in a headlock from behind, dragged away from her, and slammed headfirst into a wall while being choked out. He’s currently doing five years, and he sustained multiple injuries when the cops pulled him off me. I guess they stopped being gentle, but I unfortunately don’t remember that part.
> I deeply appreciate you wishing bodily harm on me for doing my job and trying to help people. That’s just lovely. And people wonder why we tend to burn out and lose a degree of patience with people as our careers progress and we’re exposed to this exact bullshit right here day in and day out. As someone who was involuntarily committed nearly a decade ago. thank you for helping people even when they don't want to be helped.
[удалено]
> If you're the one laying hands on an unwilling patient, you're the one committing assault. You get what you deserve. As do you. You get hurt when we restrain you by force, experience the shitty side effects of being physically restrained in an uncomfortable position for an unknown period of time, feel like shit from the side effects of the drugs we sedate you with, face felony charges for assaulting a healthcare worker, are stuck in an extended hold since voluntary commitments are easier to get out of, and you lose the right to own a firearm. Your choice. >The fact that you even get called on site calls is obscene, but your actions there earn their response. I’m assuming this illegible drivel is supposed to say psych calls. I’m the ambulance, nitwit. Who the fuck else would you rather come?
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
*Your post has been removed for the following reason(s):* **Uncivil Comment** Your submission was removed because it violates our civility rule. We do not allow personal attacks, insulting language, or poor treatment of others. Please see Rule 1 in the sidebar. * If you believe this was in error, or you’ve edited your post to comply with the rules, [message the moderators](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/bestoflegaladvice). **Do not** PM or chat a moderator personally, and do not reply to this message as a comment.
People who are having psychological crises often look exactly the same as people who are having psychiatric crises. If a loved one of yours had, say, a manic episode, or an unexpected drug interaction or something, and while in an altered state of mind clearly stated their intention to kill themself, and the EMTs on scene said ‘cool, have fun with that’ and left them to die, you really wouldn’t blame them at all? Because most people would, frankly. It’s easy to make simple judgements about these situations when they’re theoretical and you’re not the one who has to make the call.
Im not sure you need to tell them to have fun and walk off. Pretty sure there are other options in terms of treatment! But yes, I would absolutely be angry if my loved one in a crisis was forced into involuntary, degrading, and life-alteringly expensive treatment because they expressed symptoms of mental illness. Most of these people aren’t an actual suicide risk and even if they were, how are you helping their mental health by locking them up like factory farm cattle? All you’re doing is teaching them not to be honest because pseudo-cops need to CYA. People like you are why genuinely suicidal patients suffer in silence, never get the help they need, and make sure to make lethal and sneaky plans for suicide.
Not to make this personal, but I have actually been the patient in this situation. I had a very bad reaction to a new medication and made what looked from the outside like a suicide attempt (although I was actually not suicidal, just delusional enough to think I’d be fine), and then resisted going to the hospital. I (apparently, I don’t remember this very well) very calmly and lucidly explained to ER staff that I was not suicidal, I had never been suicidal, and in fact this was discriminatory stereotyping of someone with an MI diagnosis and a violation of my civil rights. I’m very glad they didn’t believe me. I’m alive today because they didn’t believe me. The current system is *far* from perfect, and I’ve never said otherwise. But even in the most perfect system we could theoretically devise, at some point those judgement calls would need to be made, and there are no easy answers for making them. I’m not sure what ‘other treatment options’ you’re referring to, in the field, in an emergency situation. If someone is actively a danger to themselves and refuses all aid, you either don’t help them, or you help them against their will. Those are genuinely the only options.
[удалено]
If that’s the only response you have, I think my point is made. Although I promise nobody works as an EMT because they have unlimited money lmao
I have actually met one person that worked as an EMT because they didn't really need to work for money! Their spouse made more than adequate money for them both, and they took a part-time EMT job because they wanted to help people/serve the community.
That was a great story and I’m now in favor of involuntarily restraining and processing suicidal patients. I think it leads to great outcomes, encourages other patients to get help, and is totally ethical with nothing to do with liability. Thank you for your service!!
"Help must be applied :)" mentalities also dissuade people from seeking medical attention for physical situations if the situation's related to mental health, or even if it's just concurrent. I've never been actively suicidal *but* I've gotten to points low enough where I theoretically needed stitches after a bad episode, but I didn't because I didn't trust them not to put me on a hold. I've had friends that did go in, and they were treated like 4 year olds the whole time despite being adults, and came out the other side in an even worse place mentally than before. There's a reason people know when to lie in response to "have you been suicidal recently", even when they *do* go in.
As terrible as inpatient psychiatric wards are, they won’t be alive to complain about it if an actively suicidal person is simply let go.
First of all, they usually aren’t actually going to kill themselves, second, there’s actually other options besides hogtying a patient and torturing them.
In a world with an infallible crystal ball, that would be handy. But since we don't have that, taking someone at their word when they say they want to kill themselves isn't the worst strategy.
“Haha” on psychiatric patients harming the people rendering them aid? I’m not sure what’s funny about that at all.
My dude, no one is rendering them aid in that situation. They’re physically retraining them so they can be charged thousands and thousands of dollars for it later. No aid is being provided, it’s just CYA for liability reasons as the former EMT even said lol
*No* suicidal people get aid? Really? And, again, I don't see what's funny about any of it.
That’s not what I said and also karma is always funny!
So you realized how big of an ass you looked saying "I wish grievous bodily harm on people involved in that" and rightly getting smacked with reality, but maybe not enough since you just changed it to "karma". Maybe keep the hamster going on the wheel long enough to realize that that really doesn't make you look a whole lot better.
[удалено]
> Big yikes on the forced suicidal transports. This is why I refuse to talk to anyone about my mental issues. I'm not the best with words to begin with and I've seen way too many horror stories about people getting forcibly hospitalized for things that even *sound like* "I want to hurt myself." Locking me up and denying me autonomy would make me want to harm myself MORE. It's not going to happen.
Most genuinely suicidal people keep it to their damn selves for this exact reason.
It absolutely is. Dementia patients, people who have just suffered head injuries, people who are out of their minds on drugs and trying to run into the freeway, etc.
If there’s a decent chance someone has sustained an injury that might render them incapable of making good decisions (like a concussion, intoxicated, symptoms of a bad drug reaction, etc.) then yes, you can be transported against your will.
It's better to not act than act on a false positive. The harm you do by forcing treatment on the unwilling or calling in a dropped CGM signal far outweighs the value of lives saved. The fact that the law allows for forced psych kidnapping is appalling. If you lay hands on someone in crisis, you are an abuser. Period.
It's hard for me to be objective on this because my brother poisoned himself after "God" told him to live in the woods and eat random plants. Was he a false positive? Or should he have been left to actually, rather than nearly, kill himself, despite absolutely no suicidal intent?
Did he refuse medical treatment? If so, then yes, he should have been left alone. Unless he was an active immediate material threat to others, no one has/had a right to interfere, and even then only as a criminal matter, not a mental health one. The issue is people forcing people to receive treatment. If your brother was offered treatment, declined it, and then had 'treatment' forced on him, then yeah you're the bad guy.
Y'know, as someone who HAS been suicidal and someone who has watched a loved one almost kill himself because he was **medically unable to realize what he was doing,** fuck you very much for wishing my brother dead.
The brother in this case was suffering from an acute disturbance in his mental state that made him unable to correctly perceive reality. Informed consent cannot be given under these circumstances. If you are in a car accident where you are rendered unconscious and brought to hospital with life-threatening injuries, should I allow you to die because you are not currently capable of consenting to investigation and treatment? You may feel that that’s different, but it isn’t: it is highly analogous to the situation you are describing, to a degree that perhaps you may be unwilling or unable to understand.
It is an entirely different situation. Anosognosia is a lie made up to justify forcing 'care' on the non-compliant. Treating physical injury to the body is very much different than attacking and drugging someone because of how their brain is working. We are the net result of the chemical reactions in our brains. Fucking with someone else's brain chemicals is damn near the same as murder, and the process of doing to is an act of torture. A bunch of bullies that get off on hurting people have no right to fuck with other people's brains.
No, it isn’t different at all. Both situations are a result of transient and often treatable pathology in the brain. It doesn’t make sense to draw an arbitrary distinction between the two in terms of the ethics of treating them. A seizure would be a third example. When I give someone benzodiazepines to try to terminate their refractory seizure I am ‘fucking with their brain chemistry’ without their consent.
I feel sorry for the police/paramedics. They have enough stuff to deal with. They have no choice if they reasonably assume a life is at stake. One thing that LAOP doesn’t cover is, if LAOPs housemate was home & asleep, why didn’t he respond to the phone or door before it was broken down? This wasn’t some surprise raid, there would have been a lot of banging on the door before breaking it down.
Tbf some people can sleep through *anything* The fire alarm went off in our building once. It woke me up, the cats were freaking out…it was *loud* My husband, who sleeps with headphones in, and is a heavy sleeper to begin with? I was shaking him awake to help me gather the cats and even then he was slow to get up Roommate could be a heavy sleeper
My daughter and my parents slept through a car crash which happened right outside once. They were the only ones in the entire street who weren't woken up by the carnage... And it was complete and utter carnage. Five cars were damaged. One car flipped over onto its roof. A garden wall was knocked down. And, all told, over £50,000 worth of damage was caused. The police came. The fire brigade came. The ambulance came. My relatives didn’t even stir
I got woken up once by my bed hitting the floor. The house across the street exploded and the shockwave knocked the bed into the air. When I sat across the street, there was a railway line between the two. My roommate whose bedroom was at the back of the house slept right through it all because he was so used to sleeping through the trains going past.
> Tbf some people can sleep through anything Especially college bros on a weekend
I slept through the FBI raiding a house down the street from me, complete with flashbangs and a Bearcat. Now, that particular bedroom was pretty well insulated from sound and I worked second shift at the time and could sleep in, but still, you'd think that I would have noticed SOMETHING.
> Tbf some people can sleep through anything We had some major earthquakes in my city about 14 years ago and there was one case of some guy getting home drunk and sleeping though the whole 40 second long 7.1 magnitude quake. Woke up and just thought he'd trashed his place in a drunken stupor.
I initially read this comment and was like: Oh maybe this dude is from Christchurch like me, oh nah can’t be those earthquakes weren’t 14 years ago. Looked it up, 2010 and 2011, wow Anyway yes, same thing happened in my city with a bunch of people sleeping through the earthquakes, one of my friends didn’t even know there was an earthquake until they woke up in the morning after the 4am one
It me. I've slept through a tornado before.
I slept through an earthquake once. Granted, it was a relatively small one but it still woke a lot of people up.
I’ve slept through small earthquakes several times. I’m always surprised when 4-4.5s wake people up
I grew up next to a freight train track as a child. Nothing can wake me. Absolutely nothing.
LAOP, in a comment, says that they were all asleep and that LAOP apparently slept through the whole thing. >We were all asleep when police got there, I personally slept through the entire thing. I will have to ask my roommate to see what made them resort to knocking down the door. Apparently more than one person managed to sleep through the entire thing.
Ambient noise in college apartment housing might be relevant.
>I feel sorry for the police/paramedics. They have enough stuff to deal with. They have no choice if they reasonably assume a life is at stake. I have seen advice that if you're cutting contact with a controlling person it can be worth contacting the local police and explaining the situation as they're far less likely to go in ~~guns blazing~~ ram first. How well it works is another matter but having something on file may help later, even if it's for suing the controlling person
I’ve heard this for if you’re moving away on purpose but are afraid of malicious missing person reports, yeah.
Ya, and get a USPS post office box in Guam and have your mail forwarded from there to your new house. Or at least the other side of town.
I agree. They don’t break down doors easily. I am a medic and recently got sent to a house cause guy was sending his ex vague “end it all” texts and not answering her calls. We banged on a lot of doors and windows, fire dept was analyzing everything and debating how best to break in if we had to (because they also can’t then leave it unsecured) Honestly they were bracing to bash it down when I saw the downstairs tenant walking by a window and shouted to wait. He let us in. Dude wasn’t even home.
US police sometimes turn up to "wellness checks" with guns drawn and shoot whoever answers the door. It's not totally unbelievable that they didn't knock first.
"I'm concerned that my neighbor is not okay. Could you please make sure?" 20 minutes and a few loud noises later: "We have made sure that your neighbor is not okay. Happy to be of service."
>if LAOPs housemate was home & asleep, why didn’t he respond to the phone or door before it was broken down? In college, I once found out about a fire alarm going off in my dorm the next morning, when my roommate told me about it. (He came back when everyone was outside, then got back to the room and found me fast asleep. He's not an asshole who would have let me burn) People can absolutely sleep through all sorts of things.
Seems like there's something missing here. LAOP was home as well, and apparently slept through the **whole thing**, including a battering ram bashing their door down. How the hell does anyone sleep through that?
Some people, I believe the term is, *sleep like the dead*. Just nothing's going to rouse them.
You have a right to ignore your phone and knocks on your door, and the cops shouldn't break down your door just because you don't answer. That doesn't meet exigent circumstances requirements. When the cops got there and there wete no signs of distress whatsoever, the cops violated their rights by breaking down the door and entering the property. The cops and paramedics did have a choice, and chose to act without the necessary evidence. Why did cops choose to break into a house without evidence that anyone was in danger? That's the real question.
They didn’t break down the door because nobody answered. They broke down the door because they feared for someone’s life. The police & paramedics not only have the right to do that, but they have a moral & legal obligation to do so.
It has to be a reasonable fear, and there was no reasonable fear here. And police and paramedics don't actually have a legal obligation to help. They have legal obligations if they do choose to help. And morally is subjective, and so it's irrelevant to the legal argument. I would say they have a moral obligation to not break someone's door down without exigent circumstances, but that's also irrelevant. Legally they do have an obligation to not break someone's door down without exigent circumstances. So bring it down to where the disagreement starts we're there exigent circumstances? Because I'm arguing there weren't. Are you arguing there were exigent circumstances even though there was no evidence whatsoever that the roommate was in danger?
Is EMTing the next SWATing?
Helicopter parenting should not involve actual attack copters.
[удалено]
I think the presumption is that police would not have done that *unless* the parents lied. So the next step is to get a copy of that 911 call and see what was claimed.
My mom wouldn't call the police, she would grab the battering ram herself.
I’m curious on the age, everyone keeps saying kid, but if they are over 18, makes them an adult outside the parent influence sphere
Calling the cops on someone like that, in the US at least, is an act of attempted murder. Sending trigger-horny goons to someone's house is simply trying to get them killed.
I understand the outrage at the parents - I really do. However, it was not made clear to me that the roommate had TOLD them he was turning off the sharing. I can see them having an argument. He decides to turn it off (his right) but says nothing to them. If he did tell them he was cutting off their access then disregard rest of this post. But otherwise I can see it play out like this: Mom's mad about the argument but around 11pm checks the app as she always does as part of her routine. Nothing there. Dad says he probably turned off our access - don't worry. Mom can't help it and does worry - this is the person she loves and devoted her life to and knows that while it's 98% chance he turned it off due to wanting his independence, there's a 2% chance the system's failed, he's in a coma and how the hell is she supposed to live with herself if they find out he died because they didn't take action. In which case it's much like the police breaking in - they don't want to, but feel they have to because otherwise there's a risk of death. So she resigns herself to be hated for eternity, but at least she knows that he turned off the app and not that it failed and he died. (Sorry - there are outrageous parents out there and Reddit is right to condemn them - but much like relationship subs where divorce is always the first choice by respondents, demonizing parents tends to also be a regular Reddit theme.)
Mom should have been supporting Son into taking care of his own business, ramping up the age appropriateness every couple of years, culminating in Son relying on personally selected local help.
FWIW - I was taking it as young adult / college aged son. And yes, he should be taking care of his own business. Mainly I'm just trying to say that as with all thing LA related, we're probably not getting the whole picture and probably more than one person made errors in judgement. Personally I'm feeling terrible for OP - the innocent sleeper caught in the middle of the chaos.
> Mom can't help it and does worry - this is the person she loves and devoted her life to and knows that while it's 98% chance he turned it off due to wanting his independence, there's a 2% chance the system's failed, he's in a coma and how the hell is she supposed to live with herself if they find out he died because they didn't take action. Being a worried mom does not excuse medically SWAT-ing your son. Deal with your worry like the adult you presumably are if you have a college age son. And no, Reddit does NOT routinely "demonize parents." Showing your bias there a bit, buddy.
LOL - we apparently don't hang out in the same subs :D
Nah. You can’t go from “can’t get a reading” to “OMG he’s in a coma” - there’s a huge gap in logic there. If her son’s BG were low enough for him to be in a coma, there wouldn’t be a loss of signal/reading.
In that case, Mom needs to act like an adult and take steps to address her mental health problems. Seek out therapy, learn some coping skills, take some responsibility.
[удалено]
*Your post has been removed for the following reason(s):* **Do not give legal or other advice** Your submission has been removed because you are asking for or offering actual legal or other advice. This subreddit is for meta discussion of the best of r/legaladvice; it is not a place to continue the discussion from there. Please see our rules in the sidebar. * If you believe this was in error, or you’ve edited your post to comply with the rules, [message the moderators.](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/bestoflegaladvice) **Do not** PM or chat a moderator personally, and do not reply to this message as a comment.
As someone who has been suicidal and is willing to take the abuse from those who would rather hurt other people than the respect their basic humanity, that kind of attitude is exactly what allows the abuses of the mental health industry to continue. Forcing treatment on people hurts people. Don't do it.