No No No No No Forever

[Content Note: Police brutality; elder abuse; violence; death.]

What in the everloving fuck:

When John Wrana was a young man, fit and strong and fighting in World War II with the U.S. Army Air Corps, did he ever think he'd end this way?

Just a few weeks shy of his 96th birthday, in need of a walker to move about, cops coming through the door of his retirement home with a Taser and a shotgun.

The old man, described by a family member as "wobbly" on his feet, had refused medical attention. The paramedics were called. They brought in the Park Forest police.

First they tased him, but that didn't work. So they fired a shotgun, hitting him in the stomach with a bean-bag round. Wrana was struck with such force that he bled to death internally, according to the Cook County medical examiner.

...I wasn't at the scene, and maybe the police have a good explanation. But common sense tells me that cops don't need a Taser or a shotgun to subdue a 95-year-old man.

The police claim that Wrana was brandishing a knife, which neither staff nor Wrana's family had ever seen in his possession.

Everything about this story is fucking terrible, and it starts with the cultural hostility we have toward individual agency. Why on earth should paramedics and police be called to force an old man to accept a medical intervention he doesn't want?

Naturally, Illinois has a Stand Your Ground ("in defense of person") law, and here again we see that such laws are only designed to be used by privileged people, while a vulnerable person does not have the right to stand his ground against unwanted care.

I don't guess I need to point out the breathtaking irony of killing a man in the process of trying to force him to undergo healthcare services he doesn't want.

[H/T to Amadi.]