The police will see to your wellbeing, even if this costs
your life:

https://theintercept.com/2018/06/05/chelsea-manning-video-tw
itter-police-mental-health/

Police Broke Into Chelsea Manning's Home with Guns Drawn --
in a "Wellness Check"
Micah Lee, Alice Speri

June 5 2018, 2:13 p.m.

Shortly after Chelsea Manning posted what appeared to be two
suicidal tweets on May 27, police broke into her home with
their weapons drawn as if conducting a raid, in what is
known as a "wellness" or "welfare check" on a person
experiencing a mental health crisis. Manning, a former Army
intelligence analyst turned whistleblower and U.S. Senate
candidate, was not at home, but video obtained by The
Intercept shows officers pointing their guns as they
searched her empty apartment.

The footage, captured by a security camera, shows an officer
with the Montgomery County Police Department in Bethesda,
Maryland, knocking on Manning's door. When no one responds,
the officer pops the lock, and three officers enter the home
with their guns drawn, while a fourth points a Taser. The
Intercept is publishing this video with Manning's
permission.

"This is what a police state looks like," Manning said.
"Guns drawn during a 'wellness' check."

Welfare checks like this, usually prompted by calls placed
to 911 by concerned friends or family, too often end with
police harming -- or even killing -- the person they were
dispatched to check on.

Manning was out of the country at the time of the incident,
said Janus Cassandra, a close friend who was on the phone
with her that night. "If Chelsea had been home when these
cops arrived with guns drawn, she would be dead."

Reached for comment, Montgomery County Police Captain Paul
Starks at first questioned the authenticity of the footage.
"Could someone send you a video that is inaccurate?" he
asked, before changing course to, "How do you know nobody
was home?"

Starks ultimately admitted that police conducted the check
at Manning's home after receiving calls from "concerned
parties" who had seen her tweets. He said officers looked up
her address and used a master key to get into the building,
and that when they realized she wasn't there they tried to
locate her by using her phone. Starks did not reply to
follow-up questions about how they attempted to track her
phone.

"They responded to the address to check her welfare," Starks
said. "Once inside the residence they realized that the
residence did not match the photo that was posted on
Twitter. ... We tried to determine where she may be by
attempting to use her phone but the phone was powered off
and they weren't able to leave a message."

Starks said that the decision to draw weapons "depends on
the officer" who "makes the decision based on circumstances
that are affecting that officer in that specific situation."
He added that the department has a dedicated crisis
intervention unit, and that all officers in the department
receive 40 hours of training in "dealing with people who may
be having emotional episodes or issues," but he failed to
indicate whether the department sets guidelines on how to
conduct welfare checks.

"They don't know what kind of circumstances they are
entering when they enter a home," Starks said, increasingly
flustered. "The fact that a weapon is drawn doesn't mean
that they are going to shoot it."

"Do you know what was going on in that apartment that night?
No. Not until you open the door and go in... We respond to
hundreds of thousands of calls each year. Many of them are
not what is phoned in."
Join Our Newsletter
Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you.
I'm in

The problem, mental health experts say, is that police
should not be the ones to check on suicidal people in the
first place. In 2017, mental illness played a role in a
quarter of 987 police killings, according to a tally by the
Washington Post. People of color experiencing mental health
crises are particularly at risk.

In 2018 alone, police have shot and killed at least 64
people who were suicidal or had other mental health issues,
according to the American Civil Liberties Union. "This
January, Alejandro Valdez was suicidal and threatening to
kill himself. The police shot and killed him," Susan Mizner,
the group's disability counsel, wrote in a recent post. "In
February, Orbel Nazarians was suicidal and threatening
himself with a knife. The police shot and killed him. In
March, Jihad Merrick was suicidal and pointing a gun at his
head. The police shot and killed him. In April, Benjamin
Evans was making suicidal comments. Police shot and killed
him."

"There is absolutely no excuse for sending armed police to
the home of someone who is having a suicidal episode," said
Cassandra. "As we've seen countless times, cops know that no
matter what happens, they will be shielded from any
accountability whatsoever."

"It's not necessary for police to be the first responders
when somebody calls 911 and says they're suicidal," said
Carl Takei, a senior ACLU attorney focusing on policing, in
an interview. "In the same way that if I were to call 911
and say I'm having a heart attack, I would expect a medical
response. As a society, we should expect a mental health
response when somebody calls 911 and says they are suicidal,
rather than dispatching somebody who is armed with a pistol
and most of whose training is directed at enforcing criminal
law and how to use force with people whom they suspect are
breaking the law."

When police do become the first responders in mental health
crises, Takei added, the ways in which they handle them vary
greatly between departments.

"Some have specially trained crisis intervention teams that
are dispatched when there's a call involving a mental health
crisis; some departments provide some level of crisis
intervention training to all officers; some departments
provide no training at all," said Takei. "And, of course, if
a department provides no training or very little training on
how to deal with situations involving a person in a mental
health crisis, the officers are going to default to the
training they received, which is very much based on a
command-and-control culture."

Manning was accused of sending hundreds of thousands of
military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks, exposing,
among other things, evidence of numerous civilian deaths in
Afghanistan and abuse by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces, as well
as information about Guantánamo Bay detainees.

In 2013, she was convicted of six counts of espionage by a
military court, but acquitted of "aiding the enemy" -- the
equivalent of a treason charge in U.S. military court. She
was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but former President
Barack Obama commuted her sentence before leaving office.
Last week, a military court upheld her conviction, which she
had appealed on First Amendment grounds.

In January, Manning announced her candidacy for the U.S.
Senate in Maryland.

Manning attempted suicide at least twice while in prison,
where she had been repeatedly held in solitary confinement,
including as punishment for one of those attempts. Last
week, she alarmed her many supporters when she posted tweets
suggesting suicidal intentions. In one, she posted a photo
that appeared to show her standing on the ledge of a
building, captioned with the words "im sorry." Manning
quickly deleted her tweets, but not before a number of
people who had read them called police to check on her.

"Chelsea is still struggling to recover from the years of
torture and mistreatment that she endured in prison, even as
she continues to use her position to fight for what she
believes in," said Cassandra, her friend.

"I hope people can understand that she needs space to heal,"
she added.

James Drylie, a former police officer who teaches criminal
justice at Kean University in New Jersey and wrote a book on
the so-called suicide by cop phenomenon, told The Intercept
that while a lot of variables determine how police execute a
wellness check, what happened at Manning's home is not
uncommon.

"They have to make sure there is no threat," he added. "What
you want to try to see is, what prompted them to think that
this person may have been a threat to the officers?"

Drylie, who as an officer had a rifle pointed at him as he
conducted a check on an individual reported to be suicidal,
conceded that an aggressive police intervention would often
only escalate a difficult situation -- "Those situations
always turn out to be very, very bad," he said. But Drylie
believes that police need to be there when a suicidal person
is posing a threat to others, whether family or mental
health professionals, and argued for better training, rather
than removing police from wellness checks altogether.

"Really, one of the best ways to be prepared for all that is
through training," he said, citing costs as a reason why so
many departments aren't better equipped to handle mental
health crises. "I don't think we do a good enough job."

There is no question that police too often resort to
violence in situations that call for de-escalation, but the
state of mental health services across the country is
equally to blame, experts argue.

"There are two simultaneous national crises -- one of police
violence and the other of inadequate mental health treatment
-- and we are making a mistake if we focus blame only on the
police," wrote Matthew Epperson, an assistant professor at
the University of Chicago School of Social Service
Administration, in an op-ed following the police killing of
Quintonio LeGrier, a 19-year-old man whose father had called
911 as he suffered a mental health episode. "They have
become, by default, the way in which our society chooses to
deal with people with mental illness in crisis, particularly
in poor and minority communities."

"Training alone will not solve the problem of police
violence against people with mental illnesses," Epperson
added. "If we are to prevent future tragedies, then we
should be ready to invest in a more responsive mental health
system and relieve the police of the burden of being the
primary, and often sole, responders."

"The moral of this story is don't call the cops," Cassandra
said. "If you know someone who is having a mental health
crisis, call a friend, a trusted neighbor, or someone close
by who can safely intervene. Keep the number to a volunteer
emergency medical service in your city or neighborhood that
can be called directly without a police response. Mental
health emergencies require friends and first responders, not
gun-toting cops."

Last week, a friend posting from Manning's account said that
she was "safe." "She is on the phone with friends," the
friend added. "Thanks everyone for your concern and please
give her some space."

** chelsea is recovering and in the company of friends.
we thank everyone for their well-wishes and support.

if you or someone you know is in crisis, these orgs can
help:

Trans Lifeline
USA: (877) 565-8860
Canada: (877) 330-6366

The Trevor Project (LGBTQ*)
USA: (866) 488-7386

-- Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) May 30, 2018
Posted on RetroBBS II