Re: With friends like that ...

So, friends of a guy claiming he had been beaten up by the police called the police department to send a cop around to his house to check on him.

You say that like they had a choice.

Chances are the friends called 911 rather than directly calling the police. Every American kid from ages 3 or 4 onward knows 911, but few people know the local police force's direct line or even think of it in what they'd call an emergency. They dial 911.

911 operators are not the police dispatchers, they're the general emergency services number. Based on the reported emergency, they may dispatch fire fighters, medical assistance, and/or police. Or rather, they'll contact the necessary service, explain the emergency, and the service will send assets as it thinks appropriate.

There's some division** of labor in emergency services. Fire fighters might tear a building apart trying to battle fire but they're not going to raise a fire ax except in last-ditch self-defense, let alone try to (for example) apprehend a crazy arsonist or tackle an upset homeowner. They need to focus on fire fighting and life saving and have a sister service that is a full-time protective organization. Similarly, ambulance crews are not cross-trained SWAT team members, not when they can focus on life saving and leave protection to the police.

As a result, when there's risk reported in the 911 call - like a house fire in a bad neighborhood where shooting firefighters is a sport - the 911 operators will either a) send both the cops and firefighters, or b) the fire fighters will note the neighborhood and call for a police escort.

So, when someone calls up 911 and says, "My buddy in San Francisco is threatening self-harm and blaming police for troubles and ranting a lot," the 911 operator:

1) Tries to figure out how to contact San Francisco emergency services, if they're not San Francisco's 911.

2) Alerts emergency services, who will be either:

2a) Police, since the first step is to gather information and police are the service trained for entry to environments made risky by humans, and they're the force trained for de-escalating situations made hostile by humans;

2b) Medics**, who will probably note "disturbed individual threatening self harm," and request police assistance

Or, hey, maybe the friends were knowledgeable, worried about police brutality, and called a San Francisco ambulance or fire service directly and said, "Hey, my friend's acting weird, threatening self-harm." Guess who that service is going to call for assistance? The police.

There's a lot of paths that lead to emergency services responding to someone like Ian Murdock, and most of them pick up police assistance along the way. Don't blame Mr. Murdock's friends for that.

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**I say "some" division, because there's sometimes a lot of overlap between fire and paramedic/ambulance services. In the regions of the US I'm familiar with, fire services usually provide faster and more extensive first response medical care than ambulance services, and have many more tools to extract you from - say - a collapsed home or massive highway pile-up.