Police Shootings of Mentally Ill Show Training Needed

Written by HealthyPlace.com Staff Writer

The fatal shooting of a mentally ill man on Thursday marked the third time in six months that Philadelphia police have used deadly force to subdue an unruly person in need of psychiatric help.

Advocates for the mentally ill said the shootings, and similar fatal encounters around the country, demonstrate that officers need better training and resources to deal with people who are emotionally disturbed.

Julio Morais, 57, was killed by a single shot to the head after he allegedly struggled with officers who had come to his apartment to help social workers commit him to a mental hospital.

Police officials said a member of the department's SWAT team opened fire only after an initial attempt to subdue Morais with an electric stun gun failed, and then only when Morais lunged at the officers with a knife. One officer was slashed in the hand.

Yet the killing, so close on the heels of two other shootings, has fueled concerns by mental health outreach workers that city officers lack the skills and procedures necessary to ensure that their encounters with the mentally ill don't turn deadly.

"There have been several incidents over the years. We have been begging the police to do something about the training. Nothing has happened," said Joseph Rogers, president of the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

"The way it works now is that if you need to have someone committed, you call the watch commander, they assign whoever is in the area, and that poor officer may not have had any experience whatsoever in handling mentally ill people," Rogers said.

Philadelphia's department has, so far, resisted suggestions from Rogers and other activists that it follow other large cities, including Houston, Memphis, Tenn., and Portland, Ore., in establishing "crisis intervention" teams comprised of officers trained in the tactics needed to calm down a person suffering from schizophrenia, depression or delusions.

Some cities send mental-health specialists on calls with police officers, and exercise policies that call for a non-confrontational approach to encounters with the mentally ill.

It is unclear whether better training could have led to a different outcome in a series of recent police shootings in Philadelphia.

Two days before Christmas, an officer fatally shot a 53-year-old woman in front of her home after she ignored an order to put down a knife. The woman had recently spent time in a psychiatric hospital and spoke limited English.

In August, two police officers killed a mentally ill woman who had been running naked down a city street. Police officials said the 27-year-old woman was shot twice, then subdued with a chemical spray, when she came at the officers with a knife. She died a day later.

Philadelphia police officials declined to discuss procedures for handling the mentally ill Friday. Previously, the department had said all three shootings appeared justified.

Elsewhere, fatal shootings have prompted changes in police procedure.

The Miami-Dade police department in southern Florida began sending every officer to a two-day class entitled "Managing Encounters with the Mentally Ill" last year after officers killed a 19-year-old man suffering from bipolar disorder. The teen had thrown his roller skates through a window and allegedly threatened officers with a shard of glass.

In California, the Ventura County Health Care Agency decided to re-establish a mental health mobile crisis unit in the city of Thousand Oaks following the fatal shooting of a mentally ill 19-year-old man. Authorities had initially been called to stop the teen from trying to slash his wrists with a box cutter. When he refused to drop the blade, a sheriff's deputy shot him eight times.

"It is a huge problem," said James Jordan of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, which currently offers training sessions to police officers and judges in Pennsylvania.

"If you get proper training, you increase your opportunities to de-escalate the situation before it turns violent. Just being able to recognize that a person is ill can give you an advantage," he said. "We think it is training that every police department should make a core requirement."

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