Introduction: Contact with Law Enforcement
Law enforcement engaged in today's community policing
efforts inevitably provide citizens with services that go well beyond enforcing
laws or maintaining public safety and order.
Police are first-line, around-the-clock, emergency responders,
mediators, referral agents, counselors, youth mentors, crime prevention actors,
and much more. Among their growing responsibilities have been responding to
people with mental illness. All too
often, individuals' inadequately treated mental illness is manifested in ways
that can result in their contact with police - sometimes with tragic results.
What may begin as a call from a business owner to "do
something" about the unkempt young man pacing in front of his store, or
community demands to keep individuals from sleeping on park benches - to the
more extreme 9-1-1 report from a frightened caller that his or her loved one is
threatening to hurt someone, or him-or-herself - will prompt a police response
that can result in myriad outcomes.
Officers on patrol will themselves encounter those who seem to be in
crisis or are in violation of some "quality-of-life" law, such as
urinating in public or sleeping in doorways.
How police respond to such individuals can have a tremendous impact on
how encounters will be resolved and on what future these individuals can
expect.
Many sections of this report focus on partnerships among
criminal justice agencies, as well as between police and mental health
professionals. Those partnerships may,
indeed, have the greatest impact on police than on any other component of the
criminal justice system. For it is police who will often provide the first
contact with the criminal justice system for people with mental illness. Their
actions and perceptions will often determine whether the individual will find
much-needed treatment, continue in his or her current situation, or face the
problems detailed in later sections that are inherent in a criminal justice
system ill prepared to meet the needs of people with mental illness.
Police response at this critical first encounter will be
shaped by whether they perceive a person's mental illness as a factor in the
call for service; their knowledge of de-escalation techniques at the scene; and
their understanding of when the nature of the crime necessitates criminal
justice action or whether it is better to engage appropriate alternative
resources. These and other decisions involve complex skills, knowledge, and
other factors addressed in this chapter.
But police simply cannot achieve meaningful reforms alone, no matter how
well trained. They will need the kind of community-based mental health
improvements, partnerships, and support outlined in this report if they are to
have any success at all.
As mentioned earlier, it is the most sensational
incidents, in which a person with mental illness kills an officer or citizen or
is killed by police, that seem to shape policy, even though they are not the
majority of cases that police see. In no way does this report minimize the
importance of officer and public safety - they are of paramount importance. In
fact, the policies outlined in this report are intended to prevent critical
incidents through effective, earlier interventions. It also acknowledges those
cases in which arrest is very appropriate, as with serious crimes. In those
cases, the offender should be in the criminal justice system. This chapter,
however, focuses most on what current policy often misses: the overwhelming
number of cases in which minor nuisance crimes are largely the result of an
individual's inadequately treated mental illness (and often co-occurring
drug/alcohol abuse). These result in large drains on police resources, and
often without any long-term solutions, for police, people with mental illness,
or crime victims. This report is meant to address some of those gaps with
practical guidelines for police professionals.
The following sections acknowledge that police cannot be
diagnosticians or pseudo-mental health professionals - but they can help stabilize
a situation, work to keep all involved parties safe (including responding
officers), make effective referrals when appropriate, and improve the lives of
people with mental illnesses and their loved ones by keeping them out of a
system ill equipped to meet their needs. The policy statements and
recommendations for implementation are meant to be tailored to the unique needs
and resources of a community and police agency. They were developed to make
more efficient and effective use of police resources. Most of all, they are
designed to support all those police personnel who want to do the right thing,
as part of their commitment to treat all citizens with dignity and fairness and
to serve all members of their community.
