It is a typical night in the city of Chicago. In a city already infamous for violent crime it would seem that a 9-1-1 call at 4:18 a.m. on the day after Christmas would not be unexpected. However, the events that transpire that night will cause a national debate. On that night, December 26, 2015, Chicago police officers responded to a call from a man who had called three times simply saying that his life was in danger. After being met with increasingly insolent replies from the 911 dispatchers, they finally dispatch an officer to the scene. Upon their arrival, they notice a young man brandishing a baseball bat as he walks out of his building. Within seconds he is shot by police. The young man was 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier, a college student who had a previous history of emotional instability according to the New York Times. What followed was a serious investigation from the US Department of Justice and even calls for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel to resign. This is by no means an isolated incident, rather it is a major problem.
It is estimated that individuals with mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed by police. This is through no fault of the police officers nor of the mentally ill. This is an indictment of a broken system. There are an estimated eight million people who suffer from serious mental illness, and there is a larger problem with these people becoming involved in a system that has failed to adequately treat them. In a typical case, someone with a mental illness becomes panicked when officers arrive, thus they react violently, and the officers often have no choice but to either use lethal force against the subject or take them into custody. Once in the criminal system they will be arraigned and placed in prison where they will be given the proper care until they are released until their court appearance in front of the judge. By that time the person probably hasn’t had their medication because they don’t have access to the proper resources. This problem is especially exacerbated in rural areas such as McKean County where mental health resources are already spread thin. From there the judge will give them a sentence, they will pay their debt to society, and most tragically the cycle repeats all over again.
There are no easy answers, but there are indeed answers. One of which is called Crisis Intervention Training, a unique program that revolves around training officers to respond to psychological emergencies with an emphasis on deescalation and conversing with the subject. It also places an emphasis on getting the person into a treatment facility rather than prison. This is not easy and will require a substantial amount of funding, but it is more than necessary. After all, a society’s strength is often found in its weakest members.
