Last evening I co-hosted an event with others fighting for justice in our community, accompanied by members of Riverside sherifs office, and the Murrieta Police DD. While the event was overall a positive experience, I caught the police in a bald-faced lie, on film. 1/25 #Thread
Backstory: Our group had prepared a list of 11 questions for the PD that were created and decided by black and brown concerned citizens, and both departments attended under the strict guidelines that we do not go off-script from the provided questions. 2/25
Our eleven questions for the officers were broken into categories: Community, policies, training, and use of force & response. As we traveled down this list and reached the Force & Response segment, I asked a question that was close to my heart. 3/25
“Are you willing to have crisis counselors or social workers respond to mental health, or domestic violence calls alongside officers?”

The answer, a profound “Yes! We always send out a behavior specialist to mental health crises in our city.”

Except I knew this was a lie. 4/25
You see, through a series of unfortunate events leading up to a very dark two days, I was 5150’ed one month ago. My experience, one I will never forget, was completely opposite of what was described to me, to the audience, and to and those watching from home. 5/25
This is not meant to be as much of admission of my traumatic incident, but to summarize what was a nightmarish experience, ill briefly explain what happened.

In 2001 I was in a major car accident that put me in a 7-week coma, and left me with permanent neurological damage. 6/25
The 10 years to follow my injury were met with a few of attempts to take my own life. With sustaining a TBI comes the likelihood of ‘emotional flare ups’, where one may be so overwhelmed by a flooding of emotions that it puts them behind an impenetrable wall of depression. 7/25
After years, through various practices of medication, therapy, and the rare inclusion of anti-depressants, I have managed to remain flare-free for well over ten years. I have been in a headspace that has allowed me to operate free of the fear that I might take my own life. 8/25
But as years progress, as the demands of life have taken precedent over the physical needs of my brain, I found that when I am active and busy is when I am best operating, internally. My time on the Bernie campaign was the most mentally-beneficial thing to ever happen to me. 9/25
Having just lost my job, and having not had the means to continue maintaining a regimented #MentalHealth program, coupled with social isolation and the lack of duty, I found myself silently spinning down that abyss of darkness. 10/25
On that Friday morning, without my wife or any loved ones having any clue what was happening, I found myself in the garage with a noose around my neck, sobbing, knowing that I would not be able to stop myself - and so I called the suicide hotline. 11/25
I spent what felt like an eternity talking to someone who, by Gods grace was also a post TBI survivor. She knew exactly what was going on, and how dire of a situation it is to be alone when going through a flare up. 12/25
It couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes that I was on the phone with her that I heard pounding on my garage door, with my wife calling my name frantically looking for me. I could hear the terror in her voice. I knew at that moment that she knew what I was doing. 13/25
By this point the operator on the hotline had brought me out of the flare up, and as I quickly deconstructed the noose and opened the garage, I was met by three police officers - all in full uniform, ready to arrest me if I refused to cooperate. 14/25
I’ve never been arrested before, and I’ve certainly never been detained in response to a mental health crisis, so this was a surprise greeting to me. The following 15 minutes were comprised of them explaining to me that it is policy to detain me for my own safety. 15/25
Mentally exhausted by the half hour that had preceded it, that with a defeated soul and body, I was handcuffed and placed in the back of a cruiser. Through all of this I thought how odd it was that the PD would send 3 cruisers and a bike to respond to a suicide attempt. 16/25
The officers that responded to me were respectful, non-aggressive, and treated me with respect, but the whole time I was going through this, I couldn’t help but think “what if I was not so collected? What if I was going through a psychotic break? Shit, what if I was black?” 17/25
I can’t help but think that if I wasn’t white, or if I wasn’t calm, or if I wasn’t cooperative, that those four police might not have been so nice. What if I was erratic or unhinged - states of being not uncommon to find among people going through a suicide attempt. 18/25
While the department requires a few dozen hours of #Mentalhealth training, a certified Behavioral Specialist goes to school for YEARS to prepare. Why send four cops to do the job of one therapist? 19/25
This brings me back to the point of this thread, the blue elephant in the room: why would both the sherif representative and the PD both claim, in front of dozens, that it is policy to *always* send a specialist, when in fact they absolutely do not? 20/25
This experience of being 5150’ed and the movement that has grown in the wake of #GeorgeFloyd’s murder, have only strengthened MY belief that we must #DefundThePolice. Clearly there is a structural fracture that allows these lies to continue. 21/25
I got lucky that the cops who catered to me clearly believe in the oath that they swore to, but the only way to shine a light on THOSE officers is to defund the system that allows the ones last night to continue to lie to their community. 22/25
We need to rebuild a system from the ground up that rewards the oath keepers and takes the keys from the corrupt caretakers. We need to #DefundThePolice, reallocating those funds to proper non-aggressive, peace keepers and behavioral specialists, among so many other areas. 23/25
I tell this full and well aware of the detrimental effects it may have on the future of my career, but I can not sit idle as I am witness to a certified grade-A bullshit lie perpetuated by someone who is supposed to work for US. If they are lying here, then where else? 24/25
Our black communities are dying at an unproportional rate at the hands of cops who will lie to the very public they serve, but the further we travel down this road to revolution, the more I firmly believe that the only solution is to #DefundThePolice. 25/25
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