#we do not need armed pigs to do emergency response and they Frequently make situations So Much Worse

[secondwhisper]

So, I don't work directly with police in my job, and in fact I frequently am in positions to argue against using police in our operations (and I do argue this whenever the opportunity arises). But one of my coworkers is an emergency responder liaison, which means she does a lot of budgeting and scheduling and managing of cops.

That all to say, in the course of a workday, I randomly get hit with a fun new "oh you're just gonna say the quiet part out loud" dystopia fact about how cops work.

Today's tip: Don't make public health and safety arguments to cops about why they should do the things they are employed to do, like directing traffic around a crash, or administering CPR before paramedics can arrive. No, here's the script: "It's not just about life and death, it's also about liability."

They're not afraid of their negligence killing people. They're afraid of the hassle of being taken to court to explain why they let their negligence kill someone.

#acab #my own post wow #to be very clear. i do not think these are legitimate reasons to employ cops. #crash response is the core of why they are hired onto our worksites by our contractors. #and IF anyone is going to sign up to do crash response. they HAVE to be able to help move cars direct traffic and administer first aid #and fill out a report afterwards #we do not need armed pigs to do emergency response and they Frequently make situations So Much Worse #im just saying that like. even the cop mom who does our cop-wrangling is saying outright upfront #in meetings with external agencies #'cops dont respond well to being told to keep people alive. instead remind them that its tedious and expensive and embarrassing #to have people start asking why you let someone die.' #and thats when they dont just fucking murder someone directly.

[gaiatheorist]

Another ‘New Normal’.

I keep starting, and then discarding this one, it seems flippant, and dismissive to crow that the lock-down in the UK is pretty much how I was living before, so I can’t understand why people are stockpiling food, or setting up street-WhatsApp groups. That’s not being callous, I have a few months of canned and dried food here, and I have tried to keep in touch with a few people. I’ve always been insular and isolated, the autism and C-PTSD set that rhythm to my life a very long time ago, and then I had a few life-events that required major adaptation. I’ve done this re-start thing a few times, absorb-accept-advance, that’s how it has to be for me, because the alternative is to hide behind the sofa, crying. 

Yesterday gave me another perspective. It was my son’s birthday, and he was in a VILE mood, conflicted between the meaningless Facebook messages from people he had no interaction with, and being unable to see the people that mattered to him. I would have said that ‘we’ have all of our needs met, but that would be to assume that he processes things like I do, and he doesn’t. He’d been becoming more fractious and irritable all day, and, although I didn’t react to it, he was spoiling for an argument, the atmosphere was dense, and heavy, weighed down with his version of a woman saying ‘fine!’ to pretend-to-halt-an-argument. He kept doing things that he knows I’m annoyed by, and I kept not-reacting, he gave up before I did, I’ve had more practice.  

His Grandma phoned him at some point during the late afternoon, and sent both of us into panic-mode. His panic involves wide-eyed pacing, shortness of breath, and our old autistic favourite, hand-gestures. Mine involves instant analysis of all available options, and a whittling down to the best-fit, with a calm and immediate decision. Grandma has some hearing loss, and she’s never been very bright. She witters away like a budgie, and interrupts other peoples’ responses with whatever candy-floss notion floats into her mind, it’s bad enough face-to-face, it’s really difficult on the phone. Granddad had had ‘One of his dos’ overnight. Red Alert. He’s probably in his late seventies, if not early eighties. He’s had cancer, Chron’s, Ulcerative Collitis, gall-bladder removal, and repeated hospital admissions due to decreased liver function, he is not a well man. Grandma has chronic asthma, and had a knee replacement last year. They’re both chronically ill, and neither of them will admit it. (I know, we have a pot-calling-kettle-black situation, I have a tendency to ‘get on with’ things, and not ask for help. I’m easily as bad as the both of them combined.)

“Grandma, GRANDMA, have you let anyone know!” I knew what he meant, and he knew what he meant, Grandma, on the other hand, started babbling off on a tangent, about how Granddad would usually phone on his birthday, but he’d been asleep since 5am. MAJOR red-flag, this is a man who doesn’t ‘stay in bed’ unless he’s in hospital, attached to drips and monitors.

“Get her off the phone, and contact your Dad.” It was a bit rude of me to speak while she was still babbling on about nothing, but, in that moment, he was close to tears with the frustration of him trying to find out whether she’d contacted a doctor, or anyone at the hospital.

“Grandma, have you phoned an ambulance, or NHS direct?”

“Oh, no, love, we don’t need that, they’ve said not to on the news, it’s just one of his turns, it’s been seven weeks since his last one, so we knew he’d be due one.” I made ‘wind it up’ hand-gestures at him. Granddad is a stubborn old mule, who insists he’s fine when he clearly isn’t, and Grandma, well, she just does as she’s told, she’s not much of an independent thinker. 

He managed to get her off the phone, and messaged his Dad. Grandma will do as she’s told if it comes from Granddad, or my ex. I was on high-alert, because the in-laws are both exceptionally frail, and it’s the don’t-like-to-bother-folk types who will be the hidden statistics in this pandemic. Granddad does ‘always’ recover after his episodes, but, quite frequently needs a spell in hospital to do so. The ex contacted her pretty quickly, and messaged back that Granddad WAS OK, it was a ‘mild’ episode, and, bizarrely, that he’d told Grandma she MUST contact him if Granddad deteriorated, or failed to improve, that he had a gas-mask, and NBC suit, and that he WOULD turn up at the house if she failed to update him. 

The whole interchange probably took no more than ten minutes. Panic-minutes are longer than ordinary minutes, as rational/decisive as I am in a crisis, because I have to be, it isn’t as easy on me as I make it look. I freak people out with how calm I seem to be, it’s the ‘swan’ analogy, I look calm and serene on the surface, but, underneath, I’m paddling like fuck, and I could probably break a person’s arm. My son HATES people-that-aren’t-him telling him what to do, or making decisions for him, BUT, he’s also profoundly anxious, and prone to dithering. Sometimes he actually actively needs to be told what to do, a small, clear, logical direction can pull him out of his panic, and give him a productive, manageable action to take. It wears me thin, to have to direct him, I have my own ‘stuff’ to deal with, but, if I don’t catch him at the start of the panic, and re-route him, he becomes unmanageable.

Granddad is either OK, or not OK, he’s either going to be OK, or not. We know he’s not coping well with the lock-down, and we know he was already going downhill emotionally, from leaving his big house, and moving into a pokey bungalow. I made the most logical decision, based on the available information, and now, it’s my ex’s turn to take over. (54, no known medical issues, own transport etc, my brain genuinely does process factors as ‘linear’ as that.) The ex will also have contact details for the relatives who live closest to the in-laws. I don’t. 

I can handle ‘not going out’, that’s what I do. I can handle attempting to make meals out of whatever-is-left, and a couple of tins. I can handle ‘only shopping for essentials’, we’re already joking about drinking the ‘Gardonnay’, my last batch of cider from the year before last, which has taken on an ‘oaky’ flavour for no discernible reason. We’re stuck in here together until the lock-down ends, and we’re both struggling with that, he’s spoiling for arguments, and being a filthy mess-pig, and I’m frequently going to my bedroom, just to get away from him. He’s pining for his usual limited social contact, as am I. He’s blithering on about his D&D online group choosing Thursday nights for games, and being interrupted by the 8pm clapping, and I’m furiously trying to move direct debits around, because I have £20.05 to last a month, DWP/UC changed my payment with a few days’ notice, and, like everyone else, their phone-lines are ‘emergencies only’. My PIP disability benefit expiring and not being renewed couldn’t have happened at a worse time, £350 a month gone, and then UC seeing fit to pay only 1/2 of the ‘Housing Element’ they’ve been allocating, The Housing Element never covered all of the rent, I was using part of the PIP to make up the shortfall. I have to appeal the decision to decline the PIP, whilst juggling everything-else. That’s the most frightening impact of the lock-down, the UC doesn’t cover my outgoings, so I would-have asked all my utilities etc for a month’s breathing-space, so I could ‘keep’ a month’s UC in my bank account while I appealed the PIP decision, and the UC Housing Element change. 

Emergency calls only. I’ve already emailed the provider for my gas/electricity, and begged a month’s grace, but I had a credit balance I could use up. I’m not in credit anywhere else. We won’t starve, but I won’t be able to buy any more fresh food this month. I don’t like this new normal.