thatpettyblackgirl:

Especially autism. Extremely dangerous.

You should also still think twice about calling the emergency number on a suicidal friend if you live in a country with universal health care and unarmed cops. 

You could be subjecting them to forced institutionalisation, forced medication, an isolation cell. And even if none of those things happen, police ‘first responders’ can often behave violently and cause intense new traumas and often if someone is too ‘weird’ first responders will – not – help. 

Some examples of experiences from me and people close to me:

• Police ‘first response’ to a suicidal transgender person: They spend hours in a police cell, being interrogated by cops who were consistently using the wrong pronouns and asking them to confirm if they were really ‘Ms. BirthName’ and why they would ‘lie about their identity’. 
• Ambulance workers respond to a person living in a neglected household: they refused to enter the house and send in a security employee instead who hours asking him whether he was ‘drunk’ or ‘on drugs’ and why he ‘lived like this’. 

These things only pile a new trauma on what was already there.  This does not make people feel better. This does not save lives in any meaningful way. 

This is also why you will never see me reblogging suicide help lines or ‘report suicide to Tumblr’ posts if the post does not specify whether the people you are contacting might at some point involve the cops and those that work with them.