A couple of months ago we posted the story of Haitian-American Alan Christopher Pean who was shot in his own hospital room by an off-duty officer. Alan was at the hospital seeking help for a mental health and shot after police said he became combative.
A couple of days ago New York Times published a story with the headline ” When the Hospital
Fires the Bullet” with updates and interviews by the Pean family and shed some light on the numerous patients seeking help at hospitals across the country who were also injured or killed by those guarding the institutions.
They have occurred as more and more American hospitals are arming guards with guns and Tasers, setting off a fierce debate among health care officials about whether such steps — along with greater reliance on law enforcement or military veterans — improve safety or endanger patients.
The same day Mr. Pean was shot, a patient with mental health problems was shot by an off-duty police officer working security at a hospital in Garfield Heights, Ohio. Last month, a hospital security officer shot a patient with bipolar illness in Lynchburg, Va. Two psychiatric patients died, one in Utah, another in Ohio, after guards repeatedly shocked them with Tasers. In Pennsylvania and Indiana, hospitals have been disciplined by government health officials or opened inquiries after guards used stun guns against patients, including a woman bound with restraints in bed.
Hospitals can be dangerous places. From 2012 to 2014, health care institutions reported a 40 percent increase in violent crime, with more than 10,000 incidents mostly directed at employees, according to a survey by the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety. Assaults linked to gangs, drug dealing and homelessness spill in from the streets, domestic disputes involving hospital personnel play out at work, and disruptive patients lash out. In recent years, dissatisfied relatives even shot two prominent surgeons in Baltimore and near Boston. – Continue Reading at The New York Times...
