(Jan. 6, 2015) In the aftermath of a police-involved shooting that left a mentally ill veteran dead in Lodi, California, the Sacramento Bee has published an especially trenchant and poignant editorial decrying that “we think it’s OK for police to fail in the face of brain disease.”
“(O)ne indisputable fact is that, despite the many lives lost and the millions of taxpayer dollars that get paid out each year for these kinds of shootings, we have chosen, so far, to turn a blind eye to this constant problem” (“Mental Illness Shouldn’t Be a Death Sentence,” Jan. 2).
Parminder Singh Shergill’s story is only too familiar. An India-born American who fought in the Gulf War, Shergill reportedly suffered from post-traumatic stress, delusions and psychosis. His family repeatedly called law enforcement when he was in psychiatric crisis, but he clearly did not get the treatment he needed to stabilize and recover. Responding to the family’s call for help in still another crisis, two officers shot the 43-year-old man as he raved on his mother’s doorstep.
The Bee rightly labels the shooting of Shergill a tragedy for everyone involved – the victim, Shergill’s family and the police officers – and calls for improved police training.
“Yes, the skills required to calm down a mentally ill person may be counterintuitive to standard cop training,” the editorial reads. “So change the training. Police can learn to deal with the mentally ill if we require them to."
The Treatment Advocacy Center in its 2013 study, “Prevalence of Mental Health Diversion Practices,” reported that half the US population lives where the proven crisis intervention practice of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) policing is in effect. No doubt, universal use of CIT and other strategies to better equip officers on the front lines of psychiatric crisis intervention would reduce justifiable homicides.
But better police training is not enough. People with untreated brain disease shouldn’t be “perpetrators,” they should be patients. Police officers shouldn’t be conscripted as mental health workers, they should be enforcing laws. When untreated symptoms lead to criminal acts, treatment – not incarceration – should be the result.
And as long as we “turn a blind eye” to all these problems, Shergill’s story will remain only too familiar.
To comment, visit our Facebook page.
Visit our blog archive to read all our recent posts.