Today In “Dick Move, Cops”

It’s actually more than a dick move in one case because a girl with bipolar disorder is shot to death after her family asks police for help.

When Melissa Boarts of Montgomery, Alabama left home after threatening to commit suicide on Sunday, April 3, her parents called 911 hoping that someone would intervene to keep her from harming herself. To their horror, Auburn Police Department instead gunned her down.

Boarts suffered from bipolar disorder and was experiencing acute depression. She had scheduled an appointment for May to seek more effective medication for her disorder. Her parents, Terry and Michael Boarts, had come to her house on Sunday to pick up Melissa’s two-year-old daughter, Skylar, for their weekly outing. Boarts suddenly drove off, threatening to slit her wrists with a pocket knife.

When Melissa stopped at a rest area on Interstate 85, the family panicked, fearing that she would carry out her threats to cut her wrists. Realizing that traffic would prevent them from reaching her quickly, they called 911.

“We were thinking they could get her help,” Terry Boarts told the Montgomery Advertiser. She explained to the dispatcher that Melissa was bipolar and was threatening self-harm.

When the Boarts finally caught up to their daughter, a helicopter hovered overhead, and fourteen police cruisers surrounded her car. They were unable to see what was going on; the dispatcher told them simply that Melissa’s car had stopped. They sat at the scene for hours, assuming that her car had left the road and hit a tree. Finally, Michael Boarts asked for information from a police sergeant who was leaving the scene. “All I know,” the sergeant replied, “is that there is one female casualty.”

Are the Alabama police that bored that they have to respond to a suicide call with an army? What a fucking tragedy. Beyond tragedy. An atrocity.

Meanwhile, a school officer body slams a 12 year old:

San Antonio Independent School District Officer Joshua Kehm was captured on video brutally body-slamming a 12-year-old girl who attends Rhodes Middle School. 

…the kids in the hallway had been anticipating a fight between her and another girl.

“I was going up to her to tell her let’s go somewhere else so we could talk but that’s when the cop thought I was going at her,” Janissa says.

Police violence must be stopped. If you can’t bring a 12 year old to heel with anything other than a suplex, you’re in the wrong line of work.