Indefensible ! Police Tazer 93 yr Old Man.

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'Two arrived to find Donald Burgess, 93, who was confined to a wheelchair, holding a blade.

After talking with him briefly, one pepper-sprayed and used his baton on the elderly man while the second officer tasered him.

They disarmed Donald, who was a resident at a home in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, and handcuffed him.

He was taken to hospital for treatment but died on July 13, three weeks after the incident.'


As you say, these are the early reports, but it doesnt look good, especially as Ive heard he was contained within a room , so there was no immediate threat to life.
It will be interesting to find out what kind of knife it was.
If it turns out that is the case, hopefully, they will get what’s due to them. Appalling, unnecessary, disproportionate use of force.
I have to question as to why the police were called in the first place though. I’ve known dementia sufferers to be very unpredictable and even violent but I’ve never known police to attend a hospital or care home environment unless an extremely serious crime had occurred.
 
Please provide evidence of this.
Didn't think it would be long before the police protection society got on the case.
Look at the BFP archives latest ones are
PC Kent who abused and attacked a youtuber
His partner the same thing
PC Perry Smith, sexual misconduct.
Another PC the week before for sexual misconduct and stalking. Then look at all the investigations and enquiries into the met,
Institutional racism
Officers misleading the enquiries to name just 2.
No wonder the police themselves admit trust of police by the public is at an all time low.
 
If the two officers weren't trained to deal with a nonagenarian one legged demented man with a knife surely they should have isolated the situation and called in officers that were?
From where that pool of thousands ? The man although as you put an old one legged man. Was demented and in possession of a knife, possibly not a butter knife possibly a carving knife, meat cleaver, aerated edged knife. Care homes have kitchens as well. Who do you think is qualified to wrap a blanket around a knife being waved around ? Jackie Cham, Bruce lee ? Dementia has the unfortunate side effect of making non violent law abiding citizens violent and volatile, my partner has been unfortunate enough to work some shifts in dementia wards, where she has seen colleagues assaulted, spat at, racially abused, sexually assaulted all by people in their 60s-90s.

I am hazarding a rough guess that the care staff felt threatened, paramedics were called and refused to attend because the man was in possession of a knife the police were then called, quite what they expected the police to do other than disarm the man who likeley did not have legal capacity to be held accountable for any crimes committed. However unfortunately although care staff are trained in restraint they are not supported by the companies when they defend themselves.

Does the approach appear heavy handed yes. With the little information available. Perhaps let’s wait and see what the investigation brings.
 
'Two arrived to find Donald Burgess, 93, who was confined to a wheelchair, holding a blade.

After talking with him briefly, one pepper-sprayed and used his baton on the elderly man while the second officer tasered him.

They disarmed Donald, who was a resident at a home in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, and handcuffed him.

He was taken to hospital for treatment but died on July 13, three weeks after the incident.'


As you say, these are the early reports, but it doesnt look good, especially as Ive heard he was contained within a room , so there was no immediate threat to life.
It will be interesting to find out what kind of knife it was.
I would agree the case does not look good for the officers in attendance. Again with the little information available. The threat to life may have been the 93 year olds own, if he had threatened to cut his own wrists or throat the taser and spray may have been deployed to eliminate that risk.
 
Utterly, utterly disgraceful. :mad: Whatever were the "caring-staff" ever thinking of making that phone call ffs??
( knives in a care home? Really?? A domestic cutlery knife most likely)
I referred to an incident in an earlier post. In that case it was an NHS hospital which provided palliative care only. The 80 yr old patient was given a filleting knife (along with cigs and alcohol) as he was asking for one as another patient was “winding him up”
A lifetime of being in and out of prison hadn’t rehabilitated him and despite having only months left on this planet, he was going to inflict serious injuries or kill another patient who didn’t know whether it was New Year or New York.
His family, who were truly horrible thought nothing of giving him his favourite knife along with fags and a lighter despite him receiving oxygen therapy!
 
Get yourself on Tik Tok, hundreds , maybe thousands of examples of police brutality , wrongful arrests , and abuse of powers, all with video evidence.
Most of them are completely justified use of restraint and justifiable arrests. The tik tok auditors are generally idiots. But whatever floats your boat, Forty odd year old career criminals looking to harass any one in uniform. Funnily enough most of these videos miss the offence or violence from the perpetrator. Funny that
 
Get yourself on Tik Tok, hundreds , maybe thousands of examples of police brutality , wrongful arrests , and abuse of powers, all with video evidence.
But please do share some, if there are literally thousands. Then share the result if the arrest, the reason for the restraint and the outcome of the court case, police complaint.
 
But please do share some, if there are literally thousands. Then share the result if the arrest, the reason for the restraint and the outcome of the court case, police complaint.
Get yourself on Tiktok and have a look , then you can decide for yourself how they are all fake/provoked/deserved.
 
'Two arrived to find Donald Burgess, 93, who was confined to a wheelchair, holding a blade.

After talking with him briefly, one pepper-sprayed and used his baton on the elderly man while the second officer tasered him.

They disarmed Donald, who was a resident at a home in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, and handcuffed him.

He was taken to hospital for treatment but died on July 13, three weeks after the incident.'


As you say, these are the early reports, but it doesnt look good, especially as Ive heard he was contained within a room , so there was no immediate threat to life.
It will be interesting to find out what kind of knife it was.
If this is true and he was holding a kitchen knife then there was an immediate threat to life - his own. Ironically the officers are duty bound to protect his life as well as anyone else. If he was about to try and take his own life they would have to intervene.
 
That is why your average copper should never be armed. If your only tool is a hammer all your problems become nails. Every week in my local paper there is an article about a different corrupt or violent police officer. Perhaps they should change their recruitment policy.
Recruitment policy? Probably. They all either have to have degrees or be getting one when they join the police. So there's no one joining to walk the beat and talk to people. They all want to sit at a desk in their office, be a boss and tell others what to do. But I also wonder if their training is at fault. There used to be regional training centres, where you went to live for 3-4 months to learn about policing, learning not only law but self defence and doing practical exercises, dealing with scenes of crimes, angry drunks etc. They actually used to get criminals and habitual drunks in to do these sometimes. This was a minimum before being let loose on the streets and even then, you had to have a tutor constable with you. The North West one, as an example, at Bruche, Warrington taught Liverpool, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire, Cumbria and the Isle of Man (mostly) and could draw on experienced supervisory training officers from all those forces. Now, each force trains their own and the old regional training centre is a housing estate. You've got to wonder how that system can be better.

As for recruitment and indeed promotions, like most government type jobs it isn't based on ability, but on interviews where they ask you questions to see how much you know and can tow policy. So as long as you give the correct woke answers and have read up on the force's woke policies, you're good to go. You might wonder how that might make good, efficient police officers and judge their abilities to deal with the public and resolve domestic disputes and solve crimes. So do many. Also, these days, being a police officer is seen by many not as a career, but as a job to do until something better comes along. A lot of recruits stop for a year or three then (probably when they realise they have to work nights and weekends and deal with big angry men and demented 93 year olds with knives) they swan off to be something else.

I suspect there are many people wanting to join the police who genuinely want to do some good in society. I fear these days, we are not giving them the tools to do it.
 
...is that rule that a fatality within a year of a physical assault is classed as murder/manslaughter still a thing?

Given the physical state of the bloke, isolation/distance or a set of stairs = ZERO risk of anyone being hurt aside from himself.
Off to Ladbokes to see what the odds are of "no charges to face" being the outcome....
As far as murder goes there is no longer a time limit. Just that the death has to be caused by the injury.
 
I take your point completely BTD. There do exsist some absolutely ghastly people, as you've noted.
Throughout my visits to several care homes which dealt primarily with Dementia patients (rather than ex cons) the sharpest knife I ever came across wouldn't scare a poached egg. As for kitchen access, quite rightly, was a trial! All of those I know off have security codes to enter. The code changing daily.
 
Get yourself on Tiktok and have a look , then you can decide for yourself how they are all fake/provoked/deserved.
I have tik tok, I’ve had a look my opinion stands. If you are going to make accusations based or a video follow it to e conclusion. Of the thousands I’m assuming they all led to disciplinary action against the officers. Or perhaps the actions were justified and the idiots with a camera looking for people to follow them edited the clips.
 
As someone who works (among other places) on an inpatient unit that assesses and treats older folk with dementias, I would certainly not be rushing to any under-informed conclusions here.
 
If this is true and he was holding a kitchen knife then there was an immediate threat to life - his own. Ironically the officers are duty bound to protect his life as well as anyone else. If he was about to try and take his own life they would have to intervene.
They really did intervene to stop him injuring himself as they were duty bound to do. why try and injure your self when the police will do it for you. As i wrote in a earlier post I'm sure I could have disarmed him even if he was armed with a machete without too much trouble. As it written at the bottom of your post, Copper is the stopper.
 
If the two officers weren't trained to deal with a nonagenarian one legged demented man with a knife surely they should have isolated the situation and called in officers that were?

From where that pool of thousands ? The man although as you put an old one legged man. Was demented and in possession of a knife, possibly not a butter knife possibly a carving knife, meat cleaver, aerated edged knife. Care homes have kitchens as well. Who do you think is qualified to wrap a blanket around a knife being waved around ? Jackie Cham, Bruce lee ? Dementia has the unfortunate side effect of making non violent law abiding citizens violent and volatile, my partner has been unfortunate enough to work some shifts in dementia wards, where she has seen colleagues assaulted, spat at, racially abused, sexually assaulted all by people in their 60s-90s.

I am hazarding a rough guess that the care staff felt threatened, paramedics were called and refused to attend because the man was in possession of a knife the police were then called, quite what they expected the police to do other than disarm the man who likeley did not have legal capacity to be held accountable for any crimes committed. However unfortunately although care staff are trained in restraint they are not supported by the companies when they defend themselves.

Does the approach appear heavy handed yes. With the little information available. Perhaps let’s wait and see what the investigation brings.

I think there is a lot more speculation in your reply than in my simple question? I thought the police had guidance to deal with these situations and I would speculate that it wasn't followed?
 
I have tik tok, I’ve had a look my opinion stands. If you are going to make accusations based or a video follow it to e conclusion. Of the thousands I’m assuming they all led to disciplinary action against the officers. Or perhaps the actions were justified and the idiots with a camera looking for people to follow them edited the clips.
I look at tik tok and there was one video from Glasgow where I knew both the cops involved. The audio was dubbed and the dialogue, spoken by Scottish voices portrayed the police to be threatening and abusive using foul language.
In reality, the conversation was simply the cops asking the lad (squaddie on leave) if he met up with his mates. He had asked for directions earlier that evening.
Dozens of other viewers were howling with rage at the corrupt fascists!
 
What and under what circumstances could this ever be considered 'reasonable' ? This poor man had dementia, was wheelchair bound and had only one leg ! Yes, he was 'waving a knife around', but I doubt that in a care home setting this would unlikely to have been a machete, more likely a 'cutlery item' ! Two policemen have been suspended. What in their training ever led them to believe this was an appropriate response ? On the face of it I am sickened by their actions ! Furthermore, what was the care home doing calling the police for an incident such as this ?
It might have been a steak knife?
 
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