7/31/16

I'm unarmed: Don't shoot!

The political conventions have come and gone.  I kinda miss the pageantry and the speeches and the spectacle.  While I'll certainly have lots more to say over the next three months on the Democratic and Republican campaigns, today I want to revisit the shooting of Charles Kinsey.

As you may recall, a North Miami police officer shot Kinsey, a behavior therapist, as he lay unarmed on the ground, trying to protect his charge, a person with autism.  
 

There’s lots to unpack here and plenty to stir outrage  (this is yet another shooting of an unarmed black man, the officer said he was aiming for the patient, and so on), and I've got an essay on the subject in the works, but today I’d like to focus instead on one of the reasons Mr. Kinsey was probably very, very concerned about his charge: Encounters between law enforcement and people with mental disorders can be unpredictable and even disastrous for the parties involved.

Back in the 70s I taught Abnormal Psych for several years to state troopers whose degrees required the course.  The first time I had these guys in my class, they very politely told me that what I was teaching them wouldn’t be really helpful out on the street.  (What they actually said was, “Ma’am, we’re not shrinks.  What you’re teaching us could get us killed.) I could definitely see that, so I found a set of protocols that had just been published by the University of Louisville on the best ways for law enforcement officers to deal with various types of mentally ill people who were acting out.  

Things have changed a lot since then.  There are now well-documented training programs that significantly improve both officer safety and the outcomes for the person in distress.  For example, I have a friend whose husband served as the commandant of his area's police academy. He said that their curriculum contains many hours of training on mental disorders, people with special needs, Alzheimer's, developmental disabilities and so on.  That's a big improvement on my cut and paste response to those students so many years ago.  Anyway, here’s a sample of the kind of training that's available today:

In coordination with a Crisis Intervention Team, outcomes can improve even more, reducing the time it takes to get the officer back on the street and reducing the return calls for the same person.  There’s a lovely report, funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the Justice*Center that speaks directly to this. The authors concluded that:

Law enforcement–based specialized responses can create positive changes for all individuals involved, including the following:

• improving officer safety
• increasing access to mental health treatment, supports, and services
• decreasing the frequency of these individuals’ encounters with the criminal justice system

• reducing certain costs incurred by law enforcement agencies

You can find the entire report here:

Law Enforcement Responses to People with Mental Illness

North Miami Police Department, take notice. Also, look up how the Las Vegas Metro Police Department has successfully reduced shootings of unarmed citizens.  And BTW, get everyone back to the firing range.  Please.