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.

  • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    I feel like I’m reading this same story once a month. There are so many people that need help and then the police show up and murder them. All the time.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      That’s not entirely true.

      Sometimes they just shoot the family dog(s) for barking and go back to work like nothing happened.

      There are countless stories of people cradling their dogs as they bleed out from bullet wounds weeping as the cops write up a ticket or something. Just constantly, all the time, and for some reason we don’t DO anything about it. Like, as a group, we could end this nightmare tomorrow if we could all cooperate for one goddamn day without horrible shitty people trying to politicize and subvert every community action we try to do to make the world a little better.

      • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        So damn true on all points. And yeah we could do so much if we could organize but trying to get Americans off their ass just once to stand up for something is damn near impossible. I wish I was in France. Those mofo’s start a riot the moment the government does anything even remotely stupid.

      • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        This is one of my biggest (hopefully irrational) fears. My dog is not violent but she is reactive, there’s no way she wouldn’t be shot dead if police ever had occasion to come into our house.