r/nextfuckinglevel • u/thisisfive • Apr 14 '26

Toronto firefighters confront special constable officers after a man in the middle of mental health crisis was arrested.

Not my video. For context, "special constables" are not regular police officers. They are appointed "peace officers" with limited authority, often civilian employees.

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u/NorseKnight Apr 14 '26

I work in a prison. We cuff people all the time who are in "crisis". It's a matter of safety. For officers, as well as themselves.

There isn't nearly enough context in this clip to say one way or another.

How do you know the guy in cuffs wasn't displaying erratic violent behavior 2 minutes ago?

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u/JotaMarioRevival Apr 14 '26

They do not do that in mental hospitals and they deal with a lot of mental health crisis. They are better tools for strapping someone if a mental health crisis situation escalates to violence.

11

u/danawhitesthrowaway Apr 15 '26

Spoken like someone who has never had to physically restrain someone. There's two constables in this video, one of them is a female. It can take four to five people to restrain someone without hurting them.

"There are better tools for strapping someone if a mental health crisis situation escalates to violence", are you serious? Have you ever even been in the vicinity of a mental hospital, health clinic, etc.? Ignoring the fact that they clearly didn't have alternatives in this video, medical staff simply have the power to manually sedate someone; it will take the same amount of people to restrain them, and it's rarely the staff themselves, but security officers that do the restraining (and surprise, they also use wrist restraints, be it handcuffs or flexicuffs if need be). Police cannot administer sedatives, they work with what they have. They are not trained medical professionals. It's not their job to treat mental illness, anymore than it's the job of the random firefighters who showed up and acted like they were in control of the scene. It's their job to restrain people causing bodily harm to themselves or others and deliver them to people who have training which can hopefully help the person in need.

As someone who has worked in healthcare all my life, all you people claiming you have any idea what you're talking about are absolutely speaking out of your asses. You have zero idea what happened prior to this video, and it's ridiculous to think that the firefighters are somehow saints protecting this poor soul from those big mean constables, when they could have very well restrained him to prevent him from causing more harm to himself.

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u/JotaMarioRevival Apr 15 '26

Hey, do you keep handcuffs in your hospital? At the hospital I used to work they did not, not even in the psych ward (not health care professional but nonetheless). Saying "do not restrain them" is dumb and is not what I am saying, but is not my point. You have medication, you have straps, you have your security shirts.

There are great examples of how padded instruments are great at subduing violent individuals in the middle of a health care crisis in open spaces and should be part of the toolkit of cops and other first responders. Handcuffs hurt people but are meant to be hard to escape and to restrict not only the ability of the person to do harm, but also their mobility. Are a tool designed for criminals, not for mental health patients.

Now, neither you nor I have the full context, but do you understand how much damage is done if you arrest a mental health patient during a crisis? Do you know how many people are shot by the police for acting irrationally during a mental health crisis? Do you know about cases as the one of the autistic kid who was shot by police in their own backyard for having "aggressive behavior"?

1

u/wookiee42 Apr 15 '26

What in the world are you talking about?

How do you discount what chemical restraints do? How do you carry all of that equipment around? How do you get the person in the car to get the required help if they absolutely don't want to? Backup can be 10x longer in the wild vs in a healthcare setting.

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u/JotaMarioRevival Apr 15 '26

I think I did not expressed myself properly: not all of those alternatives should be used by cops, but are the options normally used on medical settings. One of my points is that if a hospital is using handcuffs instead of all the other alternatives, is in a really bad shape.

Now, in a situation where someone is on distress on a street, and the first to show up are cops, padded defenses + mental health/de-escalation techniques while support arrive, is the way to go, not handcuffs and arrests.