How about we just introduce it as a legal service rather than wasting resources policing it
Reminds me of a time a couple of years back; I was investigating a pretty unusual crime whereby someone had made quite a lucrative business selling suicide masks, and had distributed them by the thousands to people via the internet, all over the world. He was living overseas, so our jurisdiction to do anything about him was severely limited (and was taken over by the elite police force in his country anyway). This left us doing the only part we could do, which was identifying any potential buyers of the masks in our respective area, and try to reach out to them before it was too late.
To my surprise, there happened to be a person who’d bought one, living just 5 miles from me; a woman. My colleague and I located her information and headed straight to her home, fearing the worst. We had no idea of knowing when she’d bought or received the mask as the data was lacking, so it could’ve been weeks or days.. To our relief, she answered the door, and when we tentatively told her why we were there, she basically broke down in front of us on the doorstep, telling us about how her life was upside down through illness, bereavement, loss of job, finances etc.. She’d had a moment of weakness when buying the mask and fully intended to take her own life when her partner and young child went to sleep the day it arrived – that’s how low she felt. She was willing to leave a beautiful family behind just like that. Thankfully, she decided against it, and destroyed and disposed of the mask in the end. Turns out she received it a couple of weeks prior, which we couldn’t have known at that time, but thankfully did the right thing, and vowed to seek support and confide in her partner.
I saw her last month, just passing by with her family and pushing a new baby in a pram. She didn’t see me, or if she did, she didn’t recognise me out of the uniform. She looked well, and the outside world will never know how close to the brink she came. Her friends won’t know. Her kids won’t know.
I think about it a lot. I’ve dealt with hundreds of people in the worst moments of their lives; saved people from dark paths, removed kids from deadly environments, helped put murderers and child abusers in prison, but for some reason this was one of the situations burned more vividly in my mind. Probably because the woman was so well put-together, so normal, you’d never have even bet that she knew a suicide mask existed, let alone sought to buy and use one herself.
Life’s a funny old ride. I’m glad this guy was caught anyway, because for him it’s another easy £100 per sale, but to someone else it’s the most costly £100 they’d ever spend.
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How about we just introduce it as a legal service rather than wasting resources policing it
Reminds me of a time a couple of years back; I was investigating a pretty unusual crime whereby someone had made quite a lucrative business selling suicide masks, and had distributed them by the thousands to people via the internet, all over the world. He was living overseas, so our jurisdiction to do anything about him was severely limited (and was taken over by the elite police force in his country anyway). This left us doing the only part we could do, which was identifying any potential buyers of the masks in our respective area, and try to reach out to them before it was too late.
To my surprise, there happened to be a person who’d bought one, living just 5 miles from me; a woman. My colleague and I located her information and headed straight to her home, fearing the worst. We had no idea of knowing when she’d bought or received the mask as the data was lacking, so it could’ve been weeks or days.. To our relief, she answered the door, and when we tentatively told her why we were there, she basically broke down in front of us on the doorstep, telling us about how her life was upside down through illness, bereavement, loss of job, finances etc.. She’d had a moment of weakness when buying the mask and fully intended to take her own life when her partner and young child went to sleep the day it arrived – that’s how low she felt. She was willing to leave a beautiful family behind just like that. Thankfully, she decided against it, and destroyed and disposed of the mask in the end. Turns out she received it a couple of weeks prior, which we couldn’t have known at that time, but thankfully did the right thing, and vowed to seek support and confide in her partner.
I saw her last month, just passing by with her family and pushing a new baby in a pram. She didn’t see me, or if she did, she didn’t recognise me out of the uniform. She looked well, and the outside world will never know how close to the brink she came. Her friends won’t know. Her kids won’t know.
I think about it a lot. I’ve dealt with hundreds of people in the worst moments of their lives; saved people from dark paths, removed kids from deadly environments, helped put murderers and child abusers in prison, but for some reason this was one of the situations burned more vividly in my mind. Probably because the woman was so well put-together, so normal, you’d never have even bet that she knew a suicide mask existed, let alone sought to buy and use one herself.
Life’s a funny old ride. I’m glad this guy was caught anyway, because for him it’s another easy £100 per sale, but to someone else it’s the most costly £100 they’d ever spend.
Death uh, finds a way.
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