In this particular scenario, the only thing I disagree with what the police did was withhold his medication. A death threat needs to be taken seriously, but that does not justify preventing someone from having access to prescribed medication.
@Gil: I'm not saying people should get a pass on committing crimes, but there is such a thing as prosecutorial discretion, which means that the prosecutor gets to pick and choose how to charge people. In the case of my friend, why could they not have given him time to stabilize his mental state? Why charge him immediately? They literally stopped him from ending his own life, and then proceed to poor gasoline on the fire by making his life even more unbearable, all for leaving a pot pipe out as he lay dying. I'm not asking for a free pass on crimes for the mentally ill, just some compassion and understanding.
@Gil: I'm not saying people should get a pass on committing crimes, but there is such a thing as prosecutorial discretion, which means that the prosecutor gets to pick and choose how to charge people. In the case of my friend, why could they not have given him time to stabilize his mental state? Why charge him immediately? They literally stopped him from ending his own life, and then proceed to poor gasoline on the fire by making his life even more unbearable, all for leaving a pot pipe out as he lay dying. I'm not asking for a free pass on crimes for the mentally ill, just some compassion and understanding.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
