r/okbuddychicanery

that’s what it looks like from the pic— they put him OVER the guardrail and behind a pile of snow where he was trapped and too scared to move

That dog did not get there on his own; he wouldn’t have gone over/through the railing where there’s no snow and onto a small ledge only to walk out to where he was stuck and too scared to move

They both look like they have scurvy after a long trip across the Atlantic by boat

(Actually lol no— I thought you meant to say WILL never)

I understood what you meant

Maybe the reason I grew up thinking Lawrence was overall ~dangerous and crimey~ is because I lived in the area that’s marked with the red X on this map during that time; I find it hard to believe the neighborhood by neighborhood stats are the same or even close to the same now as they were when I lived there multiple decades ago, and if not maybe it’s just what I was exposed to (the people my parents kept company with, getting the shit beat out of me by a classmate on my way home from school in 2nd grade— I was allowed to walk alone to and from school at Weatherbee starting in 1st grade if that tells you anything, and at some point that’s fuzzy timewise there was the murder of a neighbor) along with what everyone around me was always saying (“Joe Schmoe is a drug dealer😮”) at the point in my life when I was young, impressionable, and didn’t have a great grasp on the world around me yet

https://imgur.com/gallery/UepAZ1s

I looked it up— according to FBI stats our chances of being the victim of a crime in Lawrence MA is 1 in 89, and it’s right around the national average

In Somersworth NH our risk of the same is 1 in 28 😐

We really just love to blame everything on people who are low income or living in poverty and people with brown skin, and Lawrence and Manchester make pretty damn easy targets in that regard— which is sad and pathetic

I grew up in Lawrence but had no idea the crime rate there gets exaggerated tbh

I assumed people were being accurate when they said there’s an unusually high crime rate

The highest crime rate in the state is in somersworth and even that’s not much above the national average

I think what turns a lot people off about Manchester is that it’s overwhelmingly low income (and we’re all aware that a large part of the city is brownskinned, and that’s too scary for a lot of people) so there aren’t any super swank neighborhoods and a lot of the city is run down, and people automatically equate that to very bad/dangerous. Shit happens there and I’m happier where I am now but it’s not a place where people move to die

If someone can’t handle living in Manchester for a few years they probably can’t handle living in a real city unless it’s in a guarded building and they never go anywhere other than their own neighborhood

Have they found bodies/skeletal human remains on the rail trail a few times in the last decade or so or am I thinking of somewhere else? I just remember being shocked by it because NH— even Manchester— just isn’t very murdery

I would take a look at the Somersworth crime statistics. They are not good and I would never choose to live there

But I agree that in general there aren’t really rough places in NH. Manchester can be sucky sometimes for petty stuff like car breakins or a stolen package (I lived there for a few years, on a tree street no less) but the sharks and the jets aren’t roaming around snapping and looking for people to fight, and the way people talk about it sometimes you wouldn’t know that

this is accurate

there are a couple areas that aren’t taken care of well and can get a little ~rowdy~ and there’s some smashed TVs on the sidewalk etc but I was still able to walk in those areas alone— or with my young child— regularly without a problem when I lived in Manch for a few years

I got aggressively catcalled once by a really drunk guy near where the Dominos is on Maple St and I told him to suck my dick and kept walking home with my pizza 🤷🏻‍♀️ (*my kid was not with me that time)

the furthest north ends of all the tree streets are fine; it’s like being in a different city when you get to north ash street, it’s actually bizarre how fast it shifts in that area

You used to be able to get married at 12 in New Hampshire. Are 12 year olds adults now too?

lmao that was a blatant fucking joke, you scrambled egg. The vexing void of silence told me I’m “an irrational person who likely needs therapy” and suggested the trauma of cops killing my cousin in an oopsie is why I have the beliefs I do (spoiler: I’m not, I do, and it’s not)

I promise that no matter how stupid you think I am it’s not halfway as cooked as you are kiddo

bro omg why are u so mad tho bro calm down it’s just Reddit and I’m worried about you bro

<3

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/unionleader/name/merrill-pataski-fay-obituary?id=38555399

Size wasn’t a factor here

just ftr, the most recent news from NHPR says police logs show he was shot within two minutes of them arriving

make of it what you will, we still don’t know what actually happened that night, but I think it’s important to at least note the 120 second time span that’s now public knowledge

https://youtu.be/9mzPj_IaMzY

Are you not aware riot shields exist? Do you know the cops in Gilford could have had one each when going anywhere near that house (fully knowing they were meeting someone armed and dangerous) if our approach to law enforcement in the US was sensible? Or probably even if those cops had wanted them?

That video is cops in the UK squaring off against a man running around outside with a machete, and they successfully disarm him. Similar has happened plenty of times, just usually not in the US

Before you say “these situations aren’t even comparable!”— they’re very different situations, yes. The point is it’s definitely possible to stop/disarm/detain someone with a deadly weapon without just going “Everybody STK if you’re scared!”

There are always new ways to do old things, and we come up with them constantly. We can do this one too, we just need to give enough of a shit about it

It’s okay to be angry when someone is killed under terrible circumstances, especially when it means they’ll never get the chance to grow up

It’s actually healthy and normal to find it outrageous and to want to prevent it, even if there aren’t enough facts yet to know exactly what needed preventing in this situation

What do you think is the best way to accomplish that?

I agree with you (although I’d stop just before “never” depending on context) and am constantly asking myself how we can effectively organize to educate our own communities about mental health (and the risk of violence being much higher against people with mental illness than committed by them), deescalation tactics, crisis management, conflict resolution, resources etc— any ways to handle our shit and not involve police

We need it now

My only instinct is that i think it has to start on a micro level— one community/neighborhood/whatever at a time choosing to get to know each other and work together for everyone’s benefit. Hell, even just “anyone in town who wants to talk about mental illness and violence in our communities, and how we can work together to make this a safer and healthier place to live for everyone here, show up at {blah blah} on Tuesday the 11th” is a good start I think?

If we can get people talking— face to face— I think that alone would be a fantastic start and I hope that’s not naivety but the comments here today have been pretty disheartening

Thank you for that last couple sentences; it’s what I’ve been trying to explain all night, but what you just said is the concise bottom line

[https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2017-05-01/how-do-n-h-police-decide-to-shoot-or-not-shoot-when-facing-armed-ill-or-addicted-people]

This is a really interesting look at a lot of the questions we all have, but it also raises others that are pretty complicated

It has some interviews with police, and one of the examples actually used is a drunk man armed with a knife and mental health problems who was successfully talked down and convinced to drop it in the street while his kids and family were in the driveway. It’s hard to contrast that with Mischa’s death because the subtle differences may have changed the outcome (ie, they were outside and not in a confined space; it was broad daylight; the man had kids nearby) but it’s interesting to hear what a police officer has to say about a cops vs knife scene in NH

Some of the language is vague and could be better— “many” officers getting special deescalation training doesn’t tell us much, and they could have easily included the data on that. Regardless of how complex the topic at hand is and how contentious our conversation has been, I really think you’ll appreciate this piece

Notable: “The highest level of training teaches police that if their efforts to defuse a situation fail, they should shoot if they believe they themselves could be killed.”

A “necessary homicide” would be exactly what we’re talking about here: the death of a person due to someone else’s actions, which in this case you say is likely justified because the police had to do it (I have no problems with the word justified so I have no effing clue what you’re talking about there)

It’s not an expression I’ve ever even seen; I just said UNNECESSARY meaning senseless/preventable/avoidable

“The way it’s phrased—“ 👉HEADLINES ARE NOT FACTS👈

The title of a news article SHOULD reflect the actual facts but sometimes they don’t, or they’re just worded poorly, and we have no idea whether they used that phrasing because it’s word for word reflecting what actually happened, or if the person who wrote it used that headline because it just made sense: the police responded to a call about someone armed with a knife, so therefore he must have had a knife when he was shot. I once saw a WMUR headline that said “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Facing Death Penalty And More Snow” and I just really don’t think assuming you’re getting cold hard concrete facts from headline wording is a great idea. Do not recommend. Certain things, sure— I’m not going to quibble about whether the cops were involved or whether someone even died because I’m not an asshole devil’s advocate. But I don’t read that headline and get the same takeaway as you, so there’s obviously some confusion possible around it

Maybe he did have the knife on him, I don’t know that and I have no way to know for now, but ffs for someone braying to the heavens about how “We should all wait for the FACTS!” you’re pretty heavy into calling your own assumptions (that this kid MUST have been a lethal threat holding a knife, and there was no other choice, because “the wording on one headline sounds like that’s definitely the case”) about what happened correct and everyone else’s ✨wrong✨. How about what happened when they went in? Do you have that intel? Did they all yell at the same time and point guns at the kid? Was he told to do multiple different things at once, ie “DONT MOVE!” and “ON THE GROUND!” and “DROP THE WEAPON!” all yelled within 3 seconds? I’m sure you’ll share with the class

Don’t you get exhausted defending people with a lot more power than the rest of us who we know abuse it frequently in various ways and then tell us to suck it up when they get caught lying about it? You’re really going hard for the cops here, and they really don’t deserve it at this point