There may be no better argument for having trained unarmed crisis responders showing up to calls for folks in distress than what the footage from Isaias Cervantes' case shows us. https://twitter.com/CBSLA/status/1385047929564639233

It starts off so promising - dispatch talks to the caller at length and gets a history and picture of what's going on at the scene, just like you might hope. And that history is communicated to the deputies.

Then the deputies arrive and spend a long time outside with both his mother and his therapist, getting a sense of his mood, how violent he is/isn't, why he's upset, how he is likely to respond to police, what the mom wants to happen... again, just like you would hope.

Then the deputy gets a call while he's talking to the mom. He says he'll be there later because he's "stuck" on this call in front of the mother and therapist...a hint that he, like most officers, doesn't have a lot of time to spend at the call and will try to resolve it quickly.

The mom explains Isaias might think they are evil and trying to hurt him just before the deputies head up the walk to the door and call Isaias to come out.

The deputy calls Isaias to the door a few times and cuts immediately to the chase - we're here to help, not to arrest. There's no trust building or any kind of engagement to see where Isaias is at emotionally at all.

He first called out Isaias' name at ~13:52. At 14:13, Isaias was told deputies were not there to arrest him. 34 seconds after that, Isaias is being told deputies have no choice but to put him in handcuffs.

Isaias appears calm as deputies approach, but his mother had just spent several minutes explaining the entire reason he was so agitated was b/c of his inability to comprehend something very basic. And now deputies are giving him conflicting info while approaching him quickly.

You're not under arrest, but we're going to grab your arms and cuff you. Approximately one minute from the time they first approached the door and called out his name.

As soon as they try to restrain him, he panics and they are wrestling. He apparently grabbed at the deputy's belt and gun. Whether or not there was any intention of harm or whether it was reflex is unknown. One deputy tries to ascertain if his partner is in danger.

The shot is fired at ~15:17, less than a minute and a half from when they first spoke to Isaias. But then this goes out over the radio, again a reminder that armed officers are trained to view the subjects they encounter as suspects/criminals, not folks in crisis.

The mother tries to get to the other room where her son, who has cerebral palsy and is in a wheelchair is, and she gets yelled at and told to get out of the house.

Then there's this nugget at the end of the critical incident video about Isaias being distraught over his father being in the hospital and expressing that he wanted to die if his father did. As if this is meant to justify shooting him somehow.

Earlier this year, LASD established a direct line to the dept. of mental health to divert some calls because they know they are ill-equipped to address these calls. https://twitter.com/sahrasulaiman/status/1378739332127723522

They openly acknowledge in their own materials that their go-to to subdue someone is force, and that diverting such calls may have saved dozens of lives last year. https://twitter.com/sahrasulaiman/status/1378743965436940302

Not dispatching properly trained teams is not fair to the ill-equipped deputies, it's not fair to the person they're supposedly trying to assist, and it's not fair to the families... it puts everyone at great risk while inflicting more trauma on all involved.

Isaias luckily survived that encounter. His gofundme is here. https://www.gofundme.com/f/justice-for-isaias-cervantes

*Thanks to all those who RT'd and included the CW I should have but didn't at the top.