How Mental-Health Training for Police Can Save Lives—and Taxpayer Dollars
But only if officials at all levels of government are willing to invest in it up front.
Every day seems to bring a new tragic story of a person with serious mental illness killed by police. In Seattle, for example, there were recently back-to-back deaths: a 30-year-old pregnant woman shot in front of her children, and a 20-year-old man killed right before his high-school graduation during what appeared to be his first psychotic episode, with a pen in his hand police mistook for a knife. Sometimes, the consequences are not death but violent confrontations, arrests, and incarceration—occurring only because of miscommunication, missed signals, and misunderstandings.
Most of these tragedies result from officers’ lack of training on how to deal with people with serious mental illnesses. Standard
