washingtonpost.com

Opinion | Mental illness is a health issue, not a police issue

We may find police would welcome not being first responders to mental health crises.

[crazymeds]

Americans with mental illnesses make up nearly a quarter of those killed by police officers, according to The Post’s Fatal Force database. Meanwhile, a cumulative list shows 115 police officers have been killed since the 1970s by individuals with untreated serious mental illnesses.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The movement underway to “defund the police,” is a long-needed moment to shift responsibility for the seriously mentally ill away from police and put it back to where it belongs: on social service agencies and the medical community.

Forty percent of adults with serious mental illnesses will come into contact with the criminal justice system during their lives. Each year, 2 million of them are booked into jails. Most are charged with minor misdemeanor crimes and low-level felonies directly tied to their psychiatric illnesses. Jails and prisons currently hold more people with serious mental illnesses — 365,000 individuals — than hospitals. They remain in jail four to eight times longer than people without mental illnesses charged with the exact same crime, cost seven times more than other inmates in jail, are less likely to make bail and more likely to gain new charges while incarcerated.

There have been calls for change long before George Floyd’s death — often by police themselves. As Ron Bruno, a veteran officer who helps lead a group, CIT International, that teaches police and communities how to better interact with individuals in a mental heath crisis, has said: “We have to challenge the belief that mental health crisis services must come in a police car.”