92 year old tasered, hit and pepper sprayed

[whompingwillo]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8dv60dygro.amp

Because of a piece of cutlery? The mind boggles and it made me feel really sad. People in care homes become confused all the time due to multiple reasons. Seems highly unlikely anyone was in danger enough to warrant this force. He subsequently died 3 weeks later

I've known a 90 year old lady with dementia who required four police officers and four paramedics, just to get her into an ambulance to go to hospital for essential treatment.

This lady was 5' 2" and very slim, but extremely violent.

Some dementia patients are like that.

If it had been possible to get the knife from the patient in the video, the staff wouldn't have had to call the police.

That poor man 😞 he was confused and upset, and these two thugs went out of their way to make sure he suffered.

What threat did they think a disabled, elderly man in his bedroom posed to them? He had already been moved away from anyone he could potentially have harmed. This could all have been resolved by sitting at arm’s length from the chap and trying to distract and reassure him until he relinquished his ‘weapon’. The worst he could have done was thrown the butter knife at them.

I feel so sad for Mr Burgess, his family and also the carers who called the police as I can’t imagine the guilt they must feel for doing what they, quite reasonably, thought best to get help in that situation.

You do what we do in a school setting: you remove everyone else.

As opposed to the risk of using a taser on an elderly man with health issues?

Likewise! But then again, who wants to live in an an echo chamber? Don’t you think it’s healthy for others to have differing views? So often on here anyone deviating from the man theme of a post gets jumped on - but isn’t discussion the entire point and currency of MN?!

Watch the video and stop making up stories.

My Mum got so confused and delusional with a UTI, that she managed to get out of her care home and run towards the main road. Care assistant ran after her (she thought he was an attacker) and had to actually grab her and bring her indoors. He was very upset as she was trying to fight him off, he could see that she was really scared.
I can’t imagine how I would feel if she had been tasered by the police ! It’s absolutely shocking. A man in his tenth decade of life, confused and in a wheelchair. A butter knife ! Why staff didn’t just get it off him I don’t know, maybe they called police as they expected one to hold him and another to get the knife from his grasp ? It’s incredibly upsetting. Butter knives don’t even have a pointed end !

I'm not defending the police at all in this scenario, but for all those wondering how dangerous a amputee in his 90's could be you'd be surprised.

A nurse on the ward I work on had her arm broken by a 96 year old about three weeks ago. I was bitten, punched (broke my glasses and split lip/bloody nose) by a 98 year old woman last year. Injuries requiring medical attention are regular (injuries not requiring happen even more often).

Obviously these people are not in a right state of mind whether that's dementia or down to a temporary physical issue, I am not assigning blame.

A care home generally won't have the capacity to administer a sedative - unlikely to be a Dr there to prescribe the medication. Medication that might not even be on site. Even in a hospital you can't just do it, there may be medical contradictions even without those you have to document and justify such extreme measures and prove that other less restrictive measures have been tried documented.

It’s likely a combination of piss-poor training and lack of patience.

The gentleman was clearly very confused about why the police were there and didn’t seem to make any connection between the knife in his hand and what was happening to him; it just became an object he was holding, and not a weapon he was brandishing.

The carers might have been inexperienced, panicked or (most likely) too understaffed to spend time trying to reason with him to drop the knife so called the police as they thought they would help. I understand why they did it. I’ve managed to talk down many confused, aggressive patients before and only had to involve the police on one occasion where a patient had me on the floor and was attempting to set me on fire whilst blocking security from coming to help me (he was a young, strong and well-built man that I had no chance against and he could easily have killed me). I wouldn’t personally have called the police if confronted by an elderly man with a butter knife, but I don’t blame the carers for calling for help if they felt they needed it.

I know I don't - I speak for me - and I agree with you about having different opinions

Thank you, it’s so refreshing to hear that!

The staff were skilled in Dementia care so calling the Police was completely unnecessary.
The poor man had a UTI which can cause confusion and unpredictable behaviour
He needed kindness and calm persuasion not bloody Tasering!!
I hope, the Police officers lose their jobs over this
They are supposed to be Public servants not power hungry idiots

Jesus fucking Christ.

It’s a truly dreadful thing to watch, with a terrible outcome.

Just awful.
I'm very surprised the police even attended tbh.

That video is heartbreaking. I've seen the effects of a UTI on both my late DF and MIL, they get so confused. What the hell did they think he was going to do? Wheel at someone aggressively and stab them? Of course he wasn't. They could have distracted him from the front while someone went behind him with protection and grabbed his arm and removed the knife. There was no need for this at all.

Are you having a laugh? Ffs force was definitely not necessary. And if they really needed to I am pretty certain that one officer could have held his arm while another DC took the BUTTER knife from the hand of this frail and vulnerable old man with one leg in a fucking wheelchair. I can’t believe anyone would try to justify this. That video is.really distressing to watch.

this is incorrect, clearly nobody was in immediate danger, by law the police should have used the minimal amount of force necessary in the situation. The man was just sat there, butter knife in hand unable to walk across the room, so the sensible thing to do would be to evacuate the room completely if safe to leave the gent to deescalate the situation. If the gent was a risk to himself, leaving two police and once care staff with the gentleman would suffice. However the police failed to check in with staff to establish the situation or appropriate strategies. These officers are either badly trained or incompetent and a risk to vulnerable people.

Put your hands up and hop out on your 93-year-old leg and surrender! We aren’t kidding around!

The police officers can only act on what they see. He could have had a histroy of police callouts but that did not mean they can come in and make demands from someone is in a care home for people whos brains do not function as "normal" and expect him to react in a "normal" way.

Most men dont react well to agressive demands and will meet aggression with aggression. This can be more of a problem with someone whos brain has forgotten learned socialisation. The police can be dealing with adult who react like a 2 year old in a strop but he did not even look/act highly agressive rather its as if he mirror the male officers reactions.

And while he may be acting out due to the lack of capacity, fustration or loss of control from being in a care home he was calm enough in the video but rather than trying to talk him into handing over the "knife" they went full Robocop

Did they check if he had a pacemaker or heart problems or asthma or copd?

The police like the rest of the emergency service deal with "frequent flyers" a lot from DV to drunks to mental health breakdowns.

Using the batten so soon after the pepperspray was overkill. Broken bones even broken skin can kill old people because their bodies dont have the repair capacity. If the officer had held back the ongoing chemical burn would have resulted in him looking for help.

And using a taser to immobilse him is "cheapskate" policing they had time to call in an extra team. Which they would have needed anyway if the plan was to remove him from the property.

This is crazy and evil.

You can take a blunt butter knife out of a 92 year old amputees hand with just an oven mitt protecting your own. You are being silly. The staff too escalated the situation without using common sense in my opinion, by calling the police when they could have easily handled it themselves.

Hopefully the carers get the sack too. Evil.

On the video he seemed to be sitting in his chair with a blank expression - I don't think he understood what was going on. I'm sure the police could have taken the knife from him with minimal force - if it was a butter knife it wouldn't go through a glove if they grabbed it from his hand. The tasering and pepper spray wasn't needed.

I assume the police were blindly following some kind of protocol for 'knife incidents' rather than using common sense.

Exactly. Or wrap a towel around your hand and arm for protection from a not very sharp in the first place knife. Unless there’s a back story of the old man being dangerous to staff and/or police before, it was an extreme overreaction.