Well there’s never a dull day in the burbs.
Last night one of the people who lives a few houses down the street got high on something
(at least that was what looked like had happened), went crazy, and got shot by the police.
I got up when he was running up and down the street yelling at 2am, and called the police.
I pointed them to where he was when they arrived.
Later I went and helped with first aid after he ran down the street and tried to bust into another house brandishing a knife, and got himself shot.
Turns out he’ll probably be ok, with to the best of my knowledge only a broken leg and a few soft tissue injuries to show for being shot three times.
Lessons from this however are:
- Don’t do drugs. Just don’t.
- If you are yelling for the police to come and help you, when they do show up you should believe them when they say they are trying to help you.
- Try not to do anything stupid (like placing yourself in a situation where the police need to shoot you) – This is a variation on the second of the three major principles of my own religion. Ask me about it some time…
Other observations from this include:
- People don’t appreciate how cool it is to live in a country where at any time of day or night you can call a simple number and have police, ambulance and fire professionals come and help you out. When you think about it it’s a brilliant arrangement. No driving to the police station. No paying bribes or protection money. No one saying, sorry, we don’t have anyone available at the moment. Brilliant.
- Secondly, it’s also good to live in a country where one of the biggest disincentives for police to shoot people is the mind numbing amount of paperwork you have to fill in afterwards. This goes some way to ensuring that people only get shot as a last resort.
- Finally, previously I had been pretty heavily opposed to Police having tazers/stun guns/etc, however this did illustrate that they may have their place, given that this situation may have been able to have been resolved with less injury if a tazer had been available.
I was just reading about this on the Australian website and thinking, gee I wonder if Dave might have had to deal with this idiot at the hospital…..I was close!