Less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door, police shot Yong Yang in his parents’ Koreatown home while he was holding a knife during a bipolar episode.

Less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door, police shot Yong Yang in his parents’ Koreatown home while he was holding a knife during a bipolar episode.

Parents in Los Angeles’ Koreatown called for mental health help in the middle of their son’s bipolar episode this month. Clinical personnel showed up — and so did police shortly after.

Police fatally shot Yong Yang, 40, who had a knife in his hand, less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door to his parents’ apartment where he had locked himself in, newly released bodycam video shows.

Now the parents of Yang, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder around 15 years ago, have told NBC News exclusively that they are disputing part of the account captured on bodycam, in which police recount a clinician’s saying Yang was violent before the shooting on May 2.

  • jeffw@lemmy.worldM
    45·
    6 months ago

    Just to be clear, the family didn’t call the police. The mobile response team did, which is typically done when there’s a weapon.

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      241·
      6 months ago

      Ok, that’s fine. We’d need more details about what actually transpired and what the support team told the cops.

      But it sure seems like in a situation where the support team calls them, it should be with the understanding that they’re there for backup, not to barge in and fire.

      But looking at the report, that’s what happened.

      Also:

      On May 2, 2024, at 10:58 a.m., Olympic Division uniformed officers responded to a radio call at an apartment in the 400 block of South Gramercy Place to assist the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (DMH) who were attempting to place an individual, later identified as 40-year-old Yong Yang into custody.

      Why was the Department of Mental Health “attempting to place him into custody”? They were trying to detain him and take him from the premises, under the law…which sounds an awful lot like an arrest with a different set of paperwork.

      So basically these were just cops without guns…who went ahead and called the cops with the guns anyway.

      I said it another comment but where was the emergency here? Why did they need to get him into custody immediately? He could not hurt anyone but themselves locked in an apartment alone. He was showing aggression when people tried to enter, but could not hurt them if they stayed out.

      Why did they enter and give him someone to hurt? Seeing as how all that was going to do was give them justification to hurt him.

      • Soup@lemmy.world
        81·
        6 months ago

        The police also tried to calm him down by whining about how “hard” their job is and tried to bitch about him “making a scene”. They really have zero empathy and probably aren’t even capable of understanding how the entire outcome was their fault. The definition of “why did you make me abuse you?”.

      • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        6 months ago

        1: They want to hurt themselves or others.

        2: They said how they’ll do it.

        3: They said they’ll be doing it NOW or at a definitive time.

        If these 3 things aren’t answered with any definitive answers, they’ll leave you alone.

        You can say who you’ll kill, you can say how, but if you don’t say you plan to do it NOW or on May 23rd, you’re going to stay at home unless you have insurance and plan to go somewhere voluntarily.

        =

        Use this life hack to never have to deal with police and kill yourself if you want to as long as you’ve exhausted all real options. Pro-Choice all the way. Ain’t nobody but you gets a say on whether you want to live or not.

        Set time? Set how? No person? No 51.15.

        Don’t know when? Set how. Set kys. No 51.15

        Say it’s tomorrow? Don’t know how. Say you’ll kys. Maybe 51.15, just don’t convince them differently.

        E: Forgot the obvious. Don’t threaten anyone while you have a weapon in your possession. No, the police can no longer leave you alone. They are not allowed to just let you kill yourself without being sued into oblivion. Yes, if you threaten them with a weapon at close distance, they will kill you. No, it doesn’t matter if you’re mentally unwell, don’t threaten people with lethal weapons. Being unwell doesn’t give you carte blanche to PHYSICALLY threaten and/or hurt people.