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.
First of all, I’m not advocating for the police.
I clearly stated in my first post that the police did not handle the situation correctly because they did use lethal force and they did not wait for the ambulance when they said multiple times they would.
What I’m stating is that everyone involved had a part in passing the buck of responsibility to the next party until ultimately the end result was almost assuredly going to be bodily harm to Yong Yang.
Fair, but I go back to my original comment. Possibly the parents would have behaved differently if they had any faith the police would have. As it turns out, the police didn’t, they did what every parent of a special needs child fears.