Mental Health Crises Significant Factor in Police Shootings

As police officers’ use of lethal force has come to dominate the news cycle, considerable evidence has established a connection between police violence and the race of its victims. The dangers of a poorly trained police force extend beyond those posed to specific racial minorities. One group at particular risk is people living with mental illness, as individuals dealing with mental health crises may be more likely to be killed by the police than other members of the general public.

A lack of transparency and available data has made it difficult for researchers to obtain precise information about the number of police homicides that occur each year. Unofficial databases built by The Washington Post and The Guardian represent the most comprehensive records of police homicides in the United States—even more comprehensive than data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. These databases contain valuable information about each shooting death, including information about the mental health of the person who was shot. In their research, Amam Saleh, Paul Appelbaum, Xiaoyu Liu, T. Scott Stroup, and Melanie Wall analyzed the databases from those newspaper sources to examine the associations between mental illness and almost 1,100 police-involved fatalities that occurred in 2015.

According to the study, black men were the demographic most at risk of being killed during interactions with law enforcement, but people with mental illness across all racial groups faced heightened dangers when interacting with law enforcement. In fact, their study found that 23 percent of all people killed by police officers displayed evidence of mental illness. Overall, the risk of death as a result of police intervention was seven times greater for people with mental illness than for those without. Among non-Hispanic whites, the risk of death was nearly ten times higher for those with a history of mental illness than it was for those without.

The research suggests that many of these police shootings could have been avoided. The authors considered how the presence of a weapon affected the likelihood that police officers fatally shot the victim. Notably, people with mental illness were much more likely to be killed by police officers when armed with only a knife than were those who were similarly armed but had no evidence of mental illness. This evidence suggested that even legislation that restricts gun ownership for people with mental illness may not be enough to solve the problem.

Furthermore, individuals with mental illness killed by police were far more likely to have been within their homes than were those not found to have a history of mental illness. Generally, police shootings occur outside of the home where an individual is a threat to the general public, but more than 50 percent of people with mental illness who were killed by police officers were shot in their own homes. The threat that these individuals posed to the public was lower when confined within the boundaries of their homes, raising the question of why use of deadly force would have been necessary in such cases. The researchers suggested that, even for cases in which police intervention was necessary, police officers would have had more freedom to wait for specialized backup before confronting individuals at home.

The researchers proposed several strategies to ensure that police interventions had positive  outcomes for people experiencing mental health crises. Even without federal mandates, local jurisdictions could ensure that police officers have received appropriate training for interacting with people with mental illness. Police officers who have received crisis intervention training have additional tools to verbally de-escalate situations without relying on physical force. In addition, those who have received this training have been taught to recognize symptoms of mental illness and to use strategies to divert individuals to appropriate treatment providers instead of taking them to jail. The researchers argued that law enforcement could also take steps to develop relationships with the mental health community.

All of these strategies could help to reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness and alleviate mutual fear and distrust among the parties involved in confrontation. Law enforcement could view individuals in crisis as people in need of help, and those individuals could begin to view police officers helpers. Once that happens, law enforcement could emphasize and utilize de-escalation strategies that do not involve the use of lethal force. A better understanding of the strained relationships between law enforcement and the mental health community could help policymakers and police departments identify solutions for this community and other marginalized populations.

Article source: Saleh, Amam Z., Paul S. Appelbaum, Xiaoyu Liu, T. Scott Stroup, and Melanie Wall, “Deaths of People With Mental Illness During Interactions With Law Enforcement,” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 58 (2018): 110-116.

Featured photo: cc/(DedMityay, photo ID: 939841124, from iStock by Getty Images)