My uncle died like this. He was an alcoholic, and my aunt and his (adult) sons gave him the choice to clean up or leave the home. They had a gun in the home, he threatened to use it on himself, and my aunt and his sons left the house and called the police.
Going off of the police reports, the action on the part of the police was ultimately understandable. They found an unstable man with a gun inside - surprise surprise - and they killed him. However, the incident has always made me question whether it was appropriate for the police to enter the home in the first place. He was the only one in it, and therefore he was only risking harm to himself. If the police hadn't gotten involved, if he'd been given some hours to cool off, perhaps he would have decided to try to seek help for himself and his family. But they came in when the emotions from the intervention were still running high, and that was that.
My grandparents and my aunt and cousins were the ones who suffered the most. I just don't think they knew what to expect when they called the police, but it seemed like the best option at the time. They talk about their guilt over it to this day (it happened over ten years ago). The whole situation is very difficult.
It seems to me that there are options other than 1. Leaving or 2. Entering a home and directly engaging someone. A number of my uncle's friends are themselves former police officers, and from what I heard from them, the actions of the officers (who were all quite new to the force) were a bit premature. Going with the reasoning of "Let's do whatever scared and emotional family members tell us to do" doesn't strike me as good policy. As someone else pointed out, bring a suicide expert along very well may have diffused the situation, and it wouldn't have qualified as a failure on the part of the police to take action.
Going off of the police reports, the action on the part of the police was ultimately understandable. They found an unstable man with a gun inside - surprise surprise - and they killed him. However, the incident has always made me question whether it was appropriate for the police to enter the home in the first place. He was the only one in it, and therefore he was only risking harm to himself. If the police hadn't gotten involved, if he'd been given some hours to cool off, perhaps he would have decided to try to seek help for himself and his family. But they came in when the emotions from the intervention were still running high, and that was that.
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I don't think you can call the police and then not have them do anything. That's a shitty story though, I'm sorry about your uncle.
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