Saturday Stories

I've been noticing lately that we like to blame the messenger. A lot. It's just not right.

 

I'll give you an few examples. Both of these examples involve police, however it happens across the board not just with police.

I recently witnessed an event. 

The police were called out to do a welfare check on someone. They didn't handle it correctly, the person freaked out when they were touched, they all ended up on the ground and the person they were doing a welfare check on was placed under arrest for assaulting a police officer. (No one was injured).

If things had been handled correctly, this would have not have happened. Instead of helping, the actions of the police made the situation worse not better. 

Now, we could sit here and blame the officers involved, but the truth is that they were just acting to the best of their abilities. The blame goes on those higher up who allow things like this to happen. The blame lays with the police department for not having adequate policies and training. 

NSW has recently introduced a policy where all welfare and mental health checks are attended by two trained police officers and a mental health nurse. This should be the rule across the whole country.

 

There was recently a case where a police officer shot someone then faced murder charges for shooting the person. Imagine going to work every day and knowing that you could face criminal charges for doing your job. It wouldn't be nice.

Once again, the person they were dealing with had mental health issues. Where was the mental health support? It wasn't there, they just sent the police, things got out of hand and someone was killed. It's a tragedy for everyone involved.  

 

Nurses are another great example. If they give out the wrong medication or do something that harms a patient they're blamed. How about blaming the system that allows them to constantly be overworked and understaffed? How about blaming the system that allows them to do double shifts all week with less than an eight hour turn around time? 

 

Perhaps if we give proper support and training to people they wouldn't make mistakes. If something isn't done to rectify the broken systems we won't have enough police or medical staff and where will that leave us?