While the story from the police is questionable, the story from his family is definitely misleading. Their gofundme page says that "The footage shows him running away from the police, not engaging or attacking them. "

Frankly, that's absurd. You can't say someone fleeing law enforcement while in possession of a deadly weapon is an innocent victim. This guy presented a clear and active danger to the community, and needed to be dealt with. The cops chasing him is what I would hope would happen. I definitely don't want to live in a city where people can run around with 10 inch knives and we all have to say "Yeah, that's Knifey Jim, we can't do anything about him".

If he approached police while in possession of the knife, that's a problem, because it puts their safety at risk. They tried sponge rounds, which failed to make him stop. If he closed the distance, they need to be able to protect themselves - we can't create a world where if I want to kill a cop, all I have to do is hold a knife to myself until the final moment when I strike.

This guy was clearly not in a proper mental state, and it would be great if we could improve our social services to have intervened before he got to this point. But once he's jumping out of windows and running around with knives, I don't think the police did anything wrong. The real protest shouldn't be about police brutality, because I don't see what use of force was unwarranted here. What we should be protesting is why mental health services are impossible to access - if you wanted to get a therapist today, you'd need to call dozens of offices and have them say "Sorry, Dr. Wiggenstein is not taking new patients at this time", before eventually finding one, that doesn't take your insurance, and charges $300 a session, with earliest availability in 3 months. That needs to change.

We need to subsidize mental health treatment and make it something anyone can access smoothly, quickly, and easily. That's how you catch these issues before they go from issue to crisis.