I've been hospitalized twice on a suicide watch. I've also had supposedly "well meaning" strangers call the cops on me when I was homeless to "check on me."
The cops advised me I shouldn't be walking in the bike lane that everyone walked in because there was no sidewalk on that side of the road. Having advised me of this, had they stopped me again, they would have ticketed me. I then had to routinely expend extra energy to go out of my way going "home" every single day.
No, the cops absolutely weren't going to help me solve any of my actual problems. No, they absolutely didn't care about me, no.
Calling the cops on a stranger because you supposedly care about their welfare is asshole behavior. I don't care at all about your supposed justification or algorithms etc.
If you care, you check on them yourself or maybe call an ambulance. If you don't know them well enough to do that without it going weird and shitty places, then mind your own damn business.
That's terrible about the policing of walking in the bike lane. It reminds me of the woman in Georgia whose child was hit and killed by a driver (who had been drinking) in a hit-and-run when she crossed a road without a crosswalk. There was no crosswalk nearby. She received a much harsher sentence for crossing the street without a crosswalk than the driver received for the hit-and-run. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2011/07/14/mother-convicted-of-v...
I just read the first link. Disgusting. She crossed the street with her children and saw one of them run over in front of her, and she was charged? And did more time the one who ran them over? Wow.
I guessed the usual reason for absurdly punitive judicial decisions in the the American system, and after finding a photo of the mother I was sadly proved right.
In mostly places there's no difference between calling police or an ambulance. Everything is handled out of the same dispatch center, and the dispatcher will send whichever first responders they think are appropriate based on policy.
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In mostly places there's no difference between calling police or an ambulance.
At least in Germany, there historically is/was (even though this is not always the case anymore as far as I am aware). 110 for police and 112 for ambulance service and fire department.
There is a good reason for this: if you and a group of friends did some experiments with, let us call it, substances that did not go well, you want to call an ambulance to get them medical help. But under no circumstances you want that the police to be informed of this accident.
I didn't actually like it when strangers called an ambulance on me when I was homeless either. But the ambulance driver at least didn't threaten to ticket me if he ever saw me again in that spot.
Also, the remark about ambulances wasn't in my original comment. I added it after the fact, perhaps a mistake.
Former EMT. If you called in that you had suicidal ideation and had the means to harm yourself, it would be treated like a hostage situation, where you are both the hostage and the captor--especially if you have a weapon like a knife or gun.
I can see few situations where they would send only an ambulance. The closest is if you said you simply overdosed on pills. However, at this point you need to go to the hospital. The ambulance has no ability to force you if you change your mind. Police would likely be sent along to make sure you didn't change your mind.
firstnet.gov - Now that you mention it, I was browsing a topic, and one thing led to another to another and led me to firstnet.gov. But, you're right. Where there's an ambulance, there's police.
Assholes usually don't actually care. They just like to imagine they are good people and that their latest decision to fuck with your pathetic life while not actually genuinely caring about you at all is evidence of what wonderful people they are.
I wish assholes would stop using me as evidence of what wonderful people they imagine themselves to be. It only compounds the problem.
I have yet to run into anyone on the internet who actually cares about my actual welfare when I talk about my struggles with being suicidal. No, it's just some societal trope that trying to keep me around is some kind of good behavior on their part, never mind that they will not do fuck-all to help me resolve any of the real world problems that make me suicidal and probably won't stop fucking with me for giggles and out of prejudice either.
Assholes who imagine they care are the absolute worst people I deal with in life. There is zero upside to dealing with their shit. Assholes only produce shit. That's probably why the world calls them "assholes" to begin with.
I think you’re wrong. An asshole who cares at least has a moral compass, and knows the direction it should point. They lack motivation though to go above and beyond their own selfishness to do more than the bare minimum, but there is still hope that one day they will.
An asshole who doesn’t care at all has no hope. They truly don’t give a shit, and will only pretend to care as long as it benefits them. These are the worst.
If a homeless person is dying in the street, you really think it’s better for an asshole to just step over them and continue on without a second thought, rather than say calling 911 and then continuing with their day, just because you feel their level of care is too low?
We aren't actually talking about someone literally stepping over a body on the street. We are talking about Facebook deciding to fuck with people by calling the cops on them.
But let's go with your theory.
I was homeless for several years. I also struggle with being suicidal due to my intractable personal problems that were the root cause of my homelessness.
While homeless, I spent time successfully developing an online income. It was an uphill battle because of the shitty way I was treated by people online who do know how to make money on the internet.
Such people, no, were absolutely not willing to give me useful constructive feedback to help me develop my projects. Some of them only ever spoke to me to be openly contemptuous while pretending that speaking to me at all was their good deed of the day because they are that monstrously classist.
If someone is homeless and dying on the street, a helluva lot has already gone wrong and the lack of positive, constructive social connections combined with a preponderance of negative social connections will be a large part of the problem there.
When I was homeless, people sometimes felt compelled to try to say they didn't want me to die when I was feeling suicidal while they were incapable of not shitting all over me. I didn't need some asshole trying to use me as their imagined good deed of the day.
My experience of such moments was that I was being held hostage and compelled to continue to suffer by people who were going to continue to treat me abusively and not do fuck all to help me, or even fuck all to try to figure out how to shit on me less.
There are plenty of jurisdictions where calling 911 on a homeless person will make their situation worse - resulting in their property being confiscated and/or destroyed, for example.
The one time someone called an ambulance on me, I had lain down in the grass in a public park next to the sidewalk. I was walking somewhere and I have respiratory problems. I was having respiratory distress of a sort that doesn't resolve with sitting, but resolves handily if I just lay down for like ten minutes.
The only evidence that that there was a problem was that I was homeless and laying down. I had no collapsed. I was not thrashing about. There was no blood or foaming at the mouth or whatever.
Most likely, the reason they called an ambulance was pure prejudice and fear of approaching me to say "Hey, are you okay? Do you need help?" If I had not been homeless, they probably wouldn't have called an ambulance at all. They probably would have spoken to me to find out if I was in real distress or merely choosing to catch my breath.
An ambulance was also called once when my son laid down on the side of the road to rest while walking cross country. Locals saw strangers in their neighborhood and freaked out and called an ambulance.
In neither scenario was there any evidence of real distress beyond, well, we were obviously poor. The thing they had in common was we were poor and people were afraid to approach us because, obviously, homeless people are all junkies and crazies and will do something violent if you speak to them, I guess.
I spent most of my life middle class. I lived without a car for a number of years before being homeless. When I laid down in the grass to catch my breath while middle class, someone asked me "Are you okay?" rather than dialing 911 to sick the authorities on me. I told them I was fine and waved them on.
The irony: I was much, much sicker that day, having thrown up for 45 minutes in a public bathroom before continuing on my walk. But I was pursuing alternative remedies for my condition and walking was a big part of that and I wanted to be left the hell alone by the medical establishment has informed bluntly that people like me don't get well. So, no, I didn't want to talk a doctor about things that day. I wanted to be left the hell alone to pursue remedies that were working, remedies I was afraid the authorities would interfere with if I had to explain myself to them.
I also threw up in the bushes one day while homeless. An asshole yelled at me out their car window as they passed "Drink too much!" I don't drink. I do have a serious medical condition and sometimes my lunch doesn't stay down long because of it.
No, most people don't give a flying fuck about homeless individuals and their welfare. In most cases, they are just prejudiced assholes looking to fuck with the homeless. That's it.
I just want to say I'm really shocked that you would continue to argue with this person, who obviously has dramatically more experience with this particular topic than you do. What exactly are you trying to do, prove them wrong?
You also put up a really simple strawman with "homeless person dying on the street". That's a really contrived scenario and not what actually happens, as the person you're replying to has already explained.
The cops advised me I shouldn't be walking in the bike lane that everyone walked in because there was no sidewalk on that side of the road. Having advised me of this, had they stopped me again, they would have ticketed me. I then had to routinely expend extra energy to go out of my way going "home" every single day.
No, the cops absolutely weren't going to help me solve any of my actual problems. No, they absolutely didn't care about me, no.
Calling the cops on a stranger because you supposedly care about their welfare is asshole behavior. I don't care at all about your supposed justification or algorithms etc.
If you care, you check on them yourself or maybe call an ambulance. If you don't know them well enough to do that without it going weird and shitty places, then mind your own damn business.