The way it happens

From all indications, this man named Scott Robertson was a troubled soul. 

His girlfriend's daughter told the Baltimore SUN that he was a “loyal and caring person” but that he had inner struggles, and could become "on edge and agitated."

Those are the words of Angelika Ullsperger.  She and her mom lived with Robertson in Phoenix, northern Baltimore County, until the morning of June 22, when, as Ullsperger puts it, Robertson became disruptive.  Angelika rushed home when her mother called to say Scott had a gun. 

She called 911 to get the police to respond. She now says neither she nor her mother felt their lives were in danger, but they wanted the police to handle the matter.

“We thought they could de-escalate everything,” Ullsperger told the newspaper.

Ullsperger, her mother, and another friend ran for their lives when they saw the police arrive. Officers on the scene walked up to the house and told Robertson to come out of the house.

Instead, he came out a side door with a gun in his hands. The police hollered to him to drop the gun.  Instead, Robertson raised the gun, and was shot.

He then ran into the house and was found later, dead from the bullet wound.

Now comes the part where the second-guessing starts. Ms Ullsperger, the woman who thought that the police "could de-escalate everything," says she and her mother tried to tell the police at the house that Robertson suffered from PTSD and would only become more agitated by having police confront him.

“I tried to tell them, ‘If you come at him with a bunch of people, that would scare him. He’s going to end up dead,’” she told a reporter.

The part I don't understand is that she says she understands that the police had to do something, what with a man pointing a gun at them, but wonders why they shot him.

“I’m just hoping that something good can come out of this terrible injustice,” she says.

I am trying to see both sides of this, but to begin with, it's not like the police invited themselves to this melee. The woman now complaining is the woman who called them to come handle the situation. Unfortunately, the police take a very dim view of people who point guns at them. Why this man even had a gun available to him, in light of his history of violating a protective order against his ex wife and receiving probation and counseling in that case, is a mystery. Even Ms Ullsperger knew of his emotional swings, and when this last one swung too far out of reach for her mother and her to handle, she called the police. 

Perhaps Robertson wished to commit suicide by police; I don't know.

But I do know this: if you have someone with emotional problems in your life, they need to be helped. 

And if you come at the police as Robertson did, they are going to defend themselves. 

It's so easy to call the police to handle your issues and then later blame them for handling things as they will.