(Jan. 4, 2017) Mental illness has remained a consistent factor in police shootings for the past two years in a row, according to 2016 data reported by the Washington Post (“Fatal shootings by police remain relatively unchanged after two years,” Washington Post, Dec. 30)
In 2015, the Washington Post launched “Fatal Force”—a database tracking the number of fatal police encounters and the conditions under which they occurred. The database was created to fill an informational gap caused by the federal government’s failure to record how many people are killed by police each year.
That year, 991 people were shot and killed by law enforcement; 254 of them—or about a quarter—had a mental illness.
The database and its findings garnered national attention on the role of mental illness in police shootings, as well as the critical need for increased training for law enforcement officers on how to interact with suspects with mental illness and de-escalate potentially deadly situations.
But, recently released 2016 Post data indicates that, despite increased scrutiny of police shootings, not much has changed.
In 2016, 957 people were killed during deadly police confrontations, and mental illness remained a factor in many of them.
“As was the case last year, about 1 in 4 people fatally shot by police in 2016 were grappling with a mental health issue,” the Post reported.
A (Sort of) Measurable Problem
The Post, for two years in a row, has tracked more than twice the number of fatal shootings recorded by the federal government. But, the database relies solely on news coverage and public records and inevitably understates the scope of the problem.
Still, the consistency from 2015 to 2016 is significant.
“It shows that one year wasn’t an anomaly,” said Geoff Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina. “It’s a very robust number that is something we can trust in the future and a good measure to see when things do change.”
These findings echo those of the Treatment Advocacy Center’s 2015 report, "Overlooked in the Undercounted," which found that individuals with untreated mental illness were 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter than other civilians approached or stopped by law enforcement.
Interestingly, one of the provisions included in the monumental 21st Century Cures Act mandates data collection on the involvement of mental illness in all homicides, as well as deaths or serious bodily injuries involving law enforcement officers.
We’ll have to wait and see how this will affect the Post’s 2017 count, but we hope mandated data collection will inform law enforcement officials’ decision making and decrease the number of preventable tragedies involving people with psychiatric illnesses.
To comment, please visit our Facebook page.