Help us find Annie
Handling it right
A popular recent video on YouTube shows a woman in the Hong Kong International Airport having and out and out hissy fit. We have to take the word of the originator that the cause of the outburst was that she'd just missed a flight.
This is a temper tantrum worthy of any two-year-old, and I would imagine that the woman's family must be embarrassed to find it posted on the Web, accompanied by more than a thousand comments, most of which are snotty and sarcastic.
But I think there's an important point to be observed here: If this had occurred at a US or Canadian airport, the woman would most likely be dead by now. A flock of "security" people would have descended on her, she'd probably have been restrained and/or tasered, and would have ended up dead from that mysterious ailment called "excited delirium." Now, if you've checked the DSM-IV, you won't find a condition called "excited delirium." The psychiatric trade, in its rush to find more billable illnesses, has recognized nearly every behavioral quirk imaginable. For all we know, they have a diagnostic/billing code for someone who picks his nose and eats the boogers. But excited delirium is a fatal condition that has been recorded only after the victim has had some physical encounter with, um, law-enforcement officers. Like the Polish fellow who died in the Vancouver airport. Damn if the video of that event didn't look like he was repeatedly tasered, and killed by positional asphyxia. (Not to mention that no attempt was made to revive him.) But no, the police investigation found excited delirium, just as they ruled that as the cause of death of a woman at another airport who was handcuffed and left alone in a room after becoming agitated.
Back to the Hong Kong incident: think about what did not happen here, at least not in the nearly four minutes of this video. The airport people in this clip had the good judgment to let her rant without over-reacting to it, even though at the beginning of the clip, she can be seen shoving a couple of uniformed people. They barely attempted to engage her. This is always the best policy with irrationally angry people, who will soon enough exhaust themselves. All that was necessary was to prevent her hurting someone else.
We will probably never learn the aftermath of this incident, because it won't be sufficiently interesting or lurid to be posted. My guess is that, at worst, the woman was eventually arrested and perhaps will be held accountable for battery on the uniformed folks, or any damage she did to equipment. (Post script: a wire service article said that she caught a later flight that same day.)
Police in the USA need to realize that sometimes it's best to walk away; that they need not always "win," and that not achieving total control is not a sign of weakness.