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.