(May 29, 2015) Since the deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Walter Scott and Freddie Gray, confrontations between citizens and law enforcement, and the fatalities that result from them have come under intense media scrutiny as the public demands answers.
But much less attention has been paid to the deaths of people with mental illness at the hands of police, even though untreated severe mental illness is an increasing factor in officer-involved homicides.
Tanisha Anderson, a mentally ill woman, who died shortly after being taken into police custody in Cleveland, Ohio, last November has been all but ignored by the media. Few details of the case had been made public until Mother Jones examined the case earlier this week (“A Mentally Ill Black Woman's ‘Sudden Death’ at the Hands of Cleveland Police,” May 28).
According to official reports, police were called by Anderson’s family, and Anderson agreed to be escorted to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
But as the group approached the police vehicle waiting to escort Anderson, she “began actively resisting the officers.” Following the struggle, Anderson appeared to “go limp.” She was pronounced dead at the hospital less than an hour later. It is unclear how she died.
The public should be commended for demanding answers for the deaths of Brown, Rice, Garner, Scott and Grey, but we shouldn’t forget about the Andersons of the world – people with mental illness.
One way to start is to mandate that every law enforcement officer receive crisis intervention training on how to respond to people in a psychiatric crisis. It’s unclear whether the officers involved in Anderson’s death received the training.
The country also needs to demand that the Department of Justice collect better data on the use of police force against people with mental illness. These cases are so poorly monitored that there is no precise accounting of how many citizens are killed, much less their psychiatric diagnosis or other crucial details.
We must also recognize that the responsibility of law enforcement officers for seriously mentally ill people has increased sharply in recent years and is continuing to increase. Inevitably, the increasing number of confrontations between law enforcement officers and persons with serious mental illness leads to some unfortunate and often tragic outcomes.
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