Mental Health Crisis calls cannot be solved with bullets

Wounded Times

Kathie Costos

December 23, 2021

Why is it that people have no problem selecting someone to blame instead of knowing what is actually responsible? Mental Health Crisis calls cannot be solved with bullets.

Over and over again, we read news reports about police officers shooting someone after receiving a mental health crisis call. What we don't read is what comes afterwards. What happened to the family of the person in crisis? What happened to the officers responding?

The Concord Monitor just told the story of Meredith New Hampshire police officer Kevin O’Reilly after he received a call to respond to a man in crisis. The man was not a stranger to officer O'Reilly. He had responded because of the man "several times" before.

The article stated, "In New Hampshire, more than 60 percent of the people killed by police in the last decade struggled with mental illness, according to a Monitor analysis based on 10 years and more than 30 Attorney General reports."

 

Police are tasked with responding to mental crises. The results can be disastrous for officers and callers alike.

Concord Monitor
By TEDDY ROSENBLUTH
December 23, 2021

In New Hampshire, police officers, often not sufficiently trained on the intricacies of handling mental illness, are likely the first — and sometimes the only — response to those in a psychiatric crisis.

Last summer, Kevin O’Reilly sat around the Meredith police station with other officers and talked about a trend they noticed on the local news.

Stories of police shootings, specifically those that involved someone in a mental health crisis, seemed to pop onto the television every couple of months.

They listed off the recent ones: there was the middle-aged man shot in Belmont, about 16 miles south, whose parents said had been in and out of the psychiatric hospital for PTSD and bipolar disorder. About a year later, a 37-year-old man, who family members said struggled with delusions and paranoia for most of his adult life, was shot while running naked at a Thornton police officer about 20 miles to the north.

Every year, it seemed like more and more of O’Reilly’s job was consumed by mental illness. He estimated that on a typical night, three-quarters of his calls were to help someone in crisis.

“We’re not equipped or fully trained to deal with that,” he said. “We do our best: we try to talk softer and slower, bring them down. But we didn’t go to school for that.”
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Sometimes the person has no one trying to help them. Others have family members facing their own turmoil, knowing someone they love needs help, but for whatever reason, the help they receive is not enough. Either way, families have to deal with the results and most of the time, they are unable to make peace with the fact they did the best they could with what they were not equipped to deal with.

For the officers involved, they may be able to come to terms with having to shoot a criminal easier than they can rationalize having to shoot someone who is only dangerous because their minds are sending them into the crisis the police had to respond to.

How many times does this have to happen before this nation actually comes to the conclusion that we have a mental health crisis in this country? January 9, 2020

Police officers opened fire on the man who was armed with a knife at about 10:22 p.m. at the Veterans Affairs Hospital at 4500 S. Lancaster Road. The man was at the hospital seeking psychiatric help, police said. At some point during the interaction, the man started to walk off and the VA officers followed him and tried to disarm him, according to the VA police. Their attempts to disarm him were unsuccessful and two officers opened fire, police said.

The worst thing of all is, police departments across the country are not taking mental health seriously in their communities or in the force itself. How do they expect officers trained to respond to criminals, suddenly become able to respond to people in crisis, when they cannot even respond to officers in crisis because of the jobs they do?

The only way is remember who is responsible for what. Officers are not trained to for mental health emergencies, anymore than psychologists are trained to deal with criminals. Knowing the limitations on humans will go a long way to changing the outcome.