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By Lisa Gutierrez
The Kansas City Star
LAWRENCE, Kan. — The Lawrence Kansas Police Department shared dramatic bodycam video of two officers stopping a man from jumping off a bridge into the Kansas River — an effort to draw awareness to issues of mental health.
The video, posted to the department’s Facebook page late Wednesday afternoon, has been viewed nearly 15,000 times and elicited dozens of emotional comments.
“So sad but could’ve been even more tragic if these officers hadn’t been there,” wrote one commenter. “I’ve been in very dark places myself. I hope he’s getting the care he needs.”
The three-minute video shows an officer approaching a man who had one foot over the railing of a bridge near downtown Lawrence. Cars zipped by, and some motorists slowed down to gawk as the drama played out.
“Last night, LKPD officers responded to a person in crisis at the Kansas River bridge,” the department’s post reads.
“Officers were able to deescalate the situation by starting a conversation with the individual — making the person’s safety the number one priority.
“We see situations like this far too often.”
The police blurred the man’s face and removed “sensitive audio” from the video to protect his identity. “If you know who it is, we respectfully ask that you not identify the person in comments,” the department requested.
“We were extremely careful to protect the person’s privacy,” Laura McCabe, spokeswoman for the department, told The Star on Thursday.
When the officer pulled up to the scene and got out of his car, the man yelled at him to stay away. Some of what he said was not discernible because he was crying so hard.
“No … leave me alone … I’ll die.”
“OK, OK, I’m going to stay right here,” the officer said.
“I can’t do it anymore.”
The officer called for a boat in the water.
“I just want to talk to you,” the officer told him. “Is that OK? Can I come over and talk to you?
“You don’t (bleeping) care,” the man yelled. “It’s just your job to stop it.”
“No it’s not. I care. I care, OK. What’s going on?”
The man continued to cry. Much of what he told the officer from that point on was muted.
“Is there any way I could get you to put your foot on this other side, brother?” the officer calmly asked.
“It’s either this way or no way, I got nowhere to go.”
“Come on, brother!”
“Stay away, dude!”
“OK. OK. How can we help you? How can we help you, man?
“I don’t know.”
The officer kept the man looking at him while a second officer approached from behind.
“I can’t do it anymore, dude,” the man cried out.
“OK, I just want to help you, man.”
The second officer grabbed the man off the railing.
“I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go ...” the man cried.
“Just take a breath,” the first officer consoled him as the officers cuffed him and sat him on the ground.
The police said the man was “safely transported to the hospital.”
“This made me cry,” wrote one person who watched the video on Facebook. “I don’t even know what to say. Hearing him cry ... I will be praying for you, dude.”
The department quoted a 2023 Kaiser Family Foundation survey that revealed about a third of all Kansans report symptoms of anxiety and/or depressive disorder. (The number is similar in Missouri.)
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 560 Kansans took their lives in 2021, the department said.
“Seeing that footage makes it real, not just what we hear every day,” one Facebook commenter wrote.
The police also posted phone numbers for mental health resources, including the free Veterans Crisis Line — dial 988 then press 1.
“So glad this ended without tragedy,” wrote one commenter. “We have such a mental health crisis in the nation and it just isn’t being heard loudly enough. I appreciate seeing the kindness and empathy from those officers as they navigated this situation.”
But a couple of people criticized the department for making the video public. One called it “disrespectful.”
“While seeing this is certainly educational to the general public, i wonder why it was shown?,” one woman wrote. “In this age of everything being visible at any moment from anywhere … just because ‘we can’ doesn’t mean ‘we should.’ Such a painfully personal private moment.”
Someone else criticized the officers for handcuffing the man and “arresting” him.
He was not arrested, police said. “The handcuffs were used for officer safety and that was explained to him very calmly,” police explained on Facebook.
“What you can’t see because of the blur, is that the officer was patting his chest and/or rubbing his shoulder the entire time to try to soothe him.”
In a statement to The Star, Lawrence Police Chief Rich Lockhart reiterated “that this person was taken to the hospital to get help, not arrested. He was restrained for his own safety and the officers’. Clearly, he was in a fragile state.
“We sincerely hope this person, and the many others who are suffering, choose to trust someone enough to find a way out of the despair. We know that trust, at times, begins with us and we take that responsibility very seriously.”
Lockhart said the department posted the video to help people “see and understand what we see every day. The mental health crisis is real, and we can’t force anyone to get help, but we can make the public aware of what solutions exist.
“We think it’s important for the community to see the work officers do every day and we hope this helps promote the discussion within the community about the need for greater mental health services.”
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