In March, Anthony Hill, an Air Force veteran who served in Afghanistan, was shot and killed by a police officer in suburban Atlanta. Neighbors called police when an unarmed Hill was seen wandering around his apartment complex naked. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Hill’s death is one example of a recent deadly encounter between police and people living with mental illness. Shootings in Dallas and Milwaukee also have made national news and sparked calls for better police training.
Police officers often determine whether people living with mental illness receive treatment or punishment. As Hill’s story demonstrates, police also have the power to determine life or death. That’s a problem.
In Chicago and other cities, police departments are training officers to work with people with mental illness. Contact with a police officer is still too often an entry point to the criminal justice system rather than a treatment facility.
The root problem is a patchwork mental health safety net that long ago came apart at the seams, resulting in the criminalization of people living with mental illness. Advocates take the issue back to the 1960s, when the doors of state psychiatric facilities were flung open and people who couldn’t afford mental health care were dumped on the streets.
[For more of this story, written by Susan Smith Richardson, go to http://chicagoreporter.com/for...rate-release-repeat/]
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