Less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door, police shot Yong Yang in his parents’ Koreatown home while he was holding a knife during a bipolar episode.
Parents in Los Angeles’ Koreatown called for mental health help in the middle of their son’s bipolar episode this month. Clinical personnel showed up — and so did police shortly after.
Police fatally shot Yong Yang, 40, who had a knife in his hand, less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door to his parents’ apartment where he had locked himself in, newly released bodycam video shows.
Now the parents of Yang, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder around 15 years ago, have told NBC News exclusively that they are disputing part of the account captured on bodycam, in which police recount a clinician’s saying Yang was violent before the shooting on May 2.
This might work in a smaller town, but this family was in LA. I’ve never lived there, but I have lived in NYC and I doubt anyone in the precinct would care. They would just file some paperwork and move on to the next thing. There’s probably less than a 50/50 shot that the paperwork would be communicated to any officer in a crisis.
Maybe if your precinct does community policing, it would be beneficial to introduce yourself to any officers you know are local, but that assignment can change on a whim.
Big cities are composed of smaller divisions covered by local precincts - there’s still luck involved here but you’re really misunderstanding how policing works.