Dozens of mentally ill people die in run-ins with police every year. Last month, a homeless camper in Albuquerque, N.M., was killed in a shooting captured on an officer's helmet camera, sparking an FBI investigation and a protest that forced the city to call out riot police.
Mental health advocates say violent confrontations occur regularly between people with untreated mental illness and officers who often aren't equipped to deal with them. They blame a mental health system whose funding has been severely slashed, thrusting police into the role of first responder.
"We have systematically dismantled the treatment system for people with the most severe mental illness, and that has consequences," said Doris Fuller, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Va. "We have basically discontinued the hospital option for people who are in psychiatric crisis. What happens instead? They don't get the treatment they need, they continue to deteriorate and at some point, someone calls the police because they're out of control and there's nowhere else to go."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=301230369
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