• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Police and mental illness

T

ThePlayDrive

DP Veteran
Joined
Mar 3, 2011
Messages
19,610
Reaction score
7,647
Gender
Undisclosed
Political Leaning
Undisclosed
Anthony Hill, a 27-year-old black Air Force veteran was shot and killed by a police officer in Georgia. He was allegedly running around his apartment complex naked and approaching a police officer (one witness says he had his hands up) when he was shot. Hill had bipolar disorder.

Aside from the racial factor in this shooting, there's also the mental illness factor. There have been quite a few mental-illness-related shootings by police in the past several years and many of them seem like they could have been avoided had the officers had better training in how to deal with mentally ill people. For the most part, when someone is in the midst of bipolar or other "episode" they are more a danger to themselves than to others even if the people around them are scared because of their erratic behavior. Within this in mind, I think that there needs to be a nationwide effort to train officers more effectively in how to deal with mentally ill people. It isn't fair for officers to have to deal with these issues without the proper training and then be completely blamed when something goes wrong. And it certainly isn't fair to people with mental illnesses who end up being in situations where that fate could have been avoided.

Thoughts? Do officers need to be trained more effectively in dealing with people who have mental illnesses?
 
What " racial factor " ?
 


Do you care how many officers have died at the hands of "unarmed" suspects?
 
I think the mentally ill need more training to deal with the public, including LEOs, since it is usually the public that expresses concern and then calls the LEOs in the first place. The problem is that there are no 911 personnel trained to send properly trained (specialized?) authorities so that the "regular" police are sent to many incidents where they are ill equipped/trained to respond "appropriately". LEOs are often asked to settle disputes, act as marriage/relationship councilors, control odd (yet not criminal) behavior, discipline unruly children/adults and to basically be nannies.

To train all officers in all areas for which we expect government "expertise" is simply not practical - perhaps training them to simply not attempt to deal with things beyond their ability would be best. As a self employed handyman, if I see that a job (repair/improvement) is something that I cannot handle then I simply tell the potential customer that it is more than I can handle, briefly state why and recommend that they hire someone else.
 
MrVicchio said:
Do you care how many officers have died at the hands of "unarmed" suspects?
Click to expand...
I didn't even mention anything about unarmed suspects so what are you talking about?
 
ttwtt78640 said:
I think the mentally ill need more training to deal with the public
Click to expand...
This literally makes no sense. We're talking about people who are running around the streets naked after having a psychotic break. There's no "training" that's going to help them.
 
ThePlayDrive said:
This literally makes no sense. We're talking about people who are running around the streets naked after having a psychotic break. There's "training" that's going to help them.
Click to expand...

If this is their "normal" behavior then the police would be called to deal with them constantly. Most likely they have been seen by mental health "professionals" who decided (or were forced to decide) that they are "fine" to be sent home rather than be institutionalized. How is that now the responsibility of anyone other than the individuals that were judged to be "fine" (i.e. not needing institutional care)? You cannot have it both ways here, either folks are, or are not, OK to be left to control themsleves.

If they are sick then call or send a doctor, if they are deemed dangerous then call the police.
 
A psychotic break isn't normal. This is why most people with mental illnesses aren't walking around naked and talking to themselves. However, much like someone with a heart condition can have a heart attack or a diabetic can go into "diabetic shock", people with certain mental illnesses can have psychotic breaks or other psychological emergencies. Unlike heart attacks and diabetic shock, however, those emergencies can manifest themselves in ways that appear threatening to other people. This black and white "either people are fine or not" is not actually how mental illness works even though it would much more convenient for everybody if it did.

So, now that we know mental illness isn't as black and white as we would like it to be, do you think police should be trained better in dealing with mentally ill people so that they can avoid fatalities or should they just kill people when it could be avoided?
 

Here's some advice... Next time you don't want to discuss the racial implications, don't start your post with "a 27-year-old black Air Force veteran..." By doing so you are indicating that race is a relevant factor, when at this point there is no evidence to support such a belief.
 
I also stated that he was an Air Force veteran and yet you aren't concerned about that. It seems like you're the one having a problem with race. It would have been extremely easy for you to simply answer the question about mental illness that I asked, but you CHOSE to to ONLY talk about my mention of race. Take some PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for your actions instead of blaming me for your problem.
 

No, police should not be trained to diagnose or treat medical/mental illness just as medical/mental health people should not be trained to enforce the law. To me that is like asking a plumber to fix an electrical problem. As I stated in my first reply, the officer can try to control the person with basic verbal commands, failing that, and especially if the "nut" threatens the officer, they may use whatever force is deemed necessary to protect themselves and the public.
 

You didnt just mention that he was black you made the assertion that there was a racial factor in the shooting.
 
Crovax said:
You didnt just mention that he was black you made the assertion that there was a racial factor in the shooting.
Click to expand...

He also stated that it was not the issue under discussion in this thread.
 

Since we now live in a society where mental illness seems to be on the rise and those on drug therapy for mental health issues is soaring, maybe it's time for a Psych squad.
 
vesper said:
Since we now live in a society where mental illness seems to be on the rise and those on drug therapy for mental health issues is soaring, maybe it's time for a Psych squad.
Click to expand...

That may be a good idea but it would require better trained 911 personnel to make it effective. Many calls/callers do not have the specifics needed to make that determination, for example "I hear a fight, I hear someone screaming for help or I hear someone trying to get in the door/window".
 

I'll respond much much more fully in an hour or two, but while I think you are *partly* correct, the only way to deal with this is to make it a two-way street.
 

I have to say that in a similar shape and form I agree with your first paragraph. After we got rid of institutions we left care for the mentally ill practically as a giant vacuum. The institutions were in many cases ill equipped and had little true understanding of mental illness. Even today there is much not understood or at least agreed upon about a "normal" person's psyche. This doesn't justify practically abandoning millions of people who cannot necessarily function well or effectively in our society. We do need to help the mentally ill, whether to treat them if possible and when desired or find a common ground to their functioning in society. This of course applies to many aspects of society not just the legal.

I do have an issue with your second paragraph however. The world we live in today changes at a frightening pace, no matter who we are we must learn to adapt and change with the world around us to survive. This is of no exception to LEO's. If this means educating LEO's to deal with diverse situations and how to properly handle them then I don't see a reason why improving our police shouldn't be a option.

You hold the mentally ill to a standard which in some cases could rock their very reality, however you believe that we should hold law enforcement to a sub-par standard based upon a claim it is "unpractical." I maintain that we all have to learn and improve ourselves to truly make a situation better.
 

As was suggested elsewhere in this thread, the larger departments could use some specially trained units to deal with these special cases but the practicality of doing so across the board is unlikely. It is best to put the mentally ill in separate facilities rather that seek to make all prisons/jails serve that "sideline" function. Unlike the typical criminal sentence, the mentally ill cannot effectively be handed a fixed time to serve prior to their release and require more specialized care.
 

I find that often division of labor itself can stretch man-power too thin. It would not be sufficient to only supply the larger departments. I myself live in a rural area, and my family alone has had many mentally ill members. Although this link For Young People In Rural Areas, Suicide Poses A Growing Threat : Shots - Health News : NPR (excuse it's length I couldn't remember how to embed it properly) pertains to a single aspect of mental illness I think it can speak bounds about its prevalence in areas where these larger departments just can't tend to.

At the least state police officers with their already impressive training (at least in my own state) should receive more information on how to appropriately deal with this situations. If not for the safety of the mentally ill than at least for the officers that are going out and serving their communities.
 

So dispatchers would be the one trained to ask specific questions in dealing with a situation whether to send the psych squad or the regular squad. If a woman is walking aimlessly throughout a neighborhood in her nightgown digging through people's trash fair to say she needs the psych squad. But dealing with the mentally ill can get violent so the psych officer would have to be armed and trained like any officer. Instead of shooting bullets they could shoot tranquilizing darts like they do to subdue an animal. Just a thought.
 
I don't think the fact something like this happens any more proves that police are not trained well to deal with crazy people, than the fact an airliner crashes because of an unforeseen structural failure proves that airliners are not maintained and inspected well enough. Some cops will inevitably be involved in chaotic situations in which they don't know just what the problem is and are given no time to understand it. Agitated people can cross a room in a fraction of a second, and some of them are sure to be big and aggressive.

I wasn't there, but I do not believe there are many cops who want to kill anyone, least of all a man who is not in his right mind. I'm sure in almost all cases they hope to be able to help someone like that, but when they have only a moment to decide how to deal with an agitated, aggressive person, violence may seem to be the only answer. Lots of things are easy when you don't have to do them under very stressful conditions, with almost no time to analyze the situation.
 

The thing is that is not true. As per a report from the Treatment Advocacy Center and the National Sheriffs' Association report published in 2013:

Although no national data is collected, multiple informal studies and accounts support the conclusion that “at least half of the people shot and killed by police each year in this country have mental health problems.”
Click to expand...

The transfer of responsibility for persons with mental illness from mental health professionals to law enforcement officers is both illogical and unfair and harms both the patients and the officers
Click to expand...

http://tacreports.org/storage/documents/2013-justifiable-homicides.pdf

As you can see, there is in fact a huge problem. Granting that the NSA does not want to advocate for increased training of national police forces in dealing with this population (which I really don't think is adequate), it nevertheless indicts the existing mental health system for more or less leaving LEOs to become the de facto responders to persons with mental health issues. That, quite in fact, means that they are not trained well to, as you so insensitively put it, "deal with crazy people."

Now, if we consider that there is a lack of data being collected, the notion that the National Sheriffs' Association accepts the ideas that potentially half of police-citizen shootings involve those with mental health issues and that they do not want to be responsible for their care seriously undermines your central argument.
 
Last edited:

My girlfriends have always accused me of being insensitive, too. I tell them to get me a beer and just worry about looking pretty. The craziest ones always seem to be the hottest, but I don't know why.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more…