Suicidal ideation

Time for another rant. Today it's 'suicidal ideation'. That is when someone is (maybe) thinking about killing themselves but calls someone else to talk them out of it. So that person calls the police because killing yourself is a misdemeanor although no person has ever been charged or convicted for killing themself and if they don't succeed, no crime has been committed.

The police and an ambulance are typically dispatched. Now as far as I know, thinking about something isn't illegal. In fact, everyone has thought of killing themselves at one time or another and if they really want to do it, they do and that's it.

If the person is in their own home, alone, and may or may not have a firearm, they aren't a danger to anyone but themselves. It's their life and their choice as long as they keep it to themselves. I have seen instances in which a
SWAT team fired gas into the house, threw in flash-bangs and assaulted the home. At this point absolutely no crime has been committed. They will go so far as to shoot the person to keep them from potentially committing suicide.

I went to dozens of those calls in my day. I rarely called an ambulance and never a negotiator or a SWAT team. If the person hadn't done it by the time I arrived, they wanted me to talk them out of it. That's it. That's all they wanted. If they had a gun we'd discuss whether they wanted to shoot themselves or shoot me. It was always themselves. Sometimes I could tell them that I was scared and if they'd put the gun down we could talk---from a respectable distance. People don't expect cops to say they are scared, and a lot of the time they put it down and we talked and resolved the issue.....or I asked for a glass of water and they went to the kitchen and forgot the gun. I typically grabbed it but didn't mention that I had and some people never even noticed. The ones that did couldn't understand why I wasn't trying to handcuff them and it sometimes got a bit surreal.

If they had a knife I just kept something between them and me, but knife people usually want drama and I wouldn't play. If I couldn't reason with them I'd explain the best way to kill themselves and how much it would hurt and if they didn't stab themselves through heart I'd just wait until they bled out sufficiently and call an ambulance.

If someone was really intransigent...jumpers are typically like that....I'd try to settle the problem. If they weren't interested, I'd tell them I was getting off work in an hour and would they please hurry up because I would have to do hours of paperwork. I talked to one idiot's girlfriend before I found him on a roof and he was despondent because he thought she had another boyfriend. I already knew her name and the issue, so I asked him who she was that he would consider jumping off a roof. When he told me, I said “Oh...YOU are the idiot Debbie is trying to dump. I guess getting you to jump off the roof will work, won't it. Hi! I'm her new boyfriend” and pulled out a picture I had gotten from her downstairs. Instead of jumping off the roof, he tried to engage me in some sport. I don't know if he intended wrestling or fisticuffs, but people can't fight when they are mad. I hooked him for battery on a Peace Officer and away we went.

People who had taken 500 Valium or 100 Percodan (whatever) were easy. You call an ambulance and wait until they pass out and puke it all up. I wouldn't have thought of calling an ambulance for 20 aspirin, but that's what happens now.

Maybe I was lucky or just unorthodox but I never had a suicide threat go south.
Anyway...”Suicidal ideation” isn't a crime. Killing someone to prevent them from potentially killing themselves is called 'suicide by cop' and is probably what they want. But that's not what they deserve. They deserve a chance to calm down and escalating the situation doesn't calm them down.