Black Lives Matter has been leading the charge in calling for defunding the police. While that may initially sound like a very bad idea, taking money away from the police is only half of the picture. The money that would be spent on police is instead shifted to community programs and supports to handle the underlying issues more effectively. Besides the impact on systemic racism, defunding the police could make a big difference in the way communities respond to people with mental illness.
What is defunding the police?
Before we consider the mental illness angle, let’s take a quick look at what defunding the police might look like. The American Civil Liberties Union offers a three-part formula for their vision of defunding the police:
1) Prohibiting police from enforcing a range of non-serious offenses, including issuing fines, and making arrests for non-dangerous behaviors, eliminating many of the unnecessary interactions between the police and community members that have led to so much violence and so many deaths;
2) Reinvesting savings from the current policing budgets into alternatives to policing that will keep local communities safe and help them thrive;
3) Implementing common-sense, iron-clad legal constraints, and other protections on the rare instances in which police officers do interact with community members.
The police and mental illness
How does this relate to mental illness? In many places, the police are the de facto emergency mental health service. Some forces use a crisis intervention team model with extra mental health training, but they’re still not mental health professionals. The police use the term “emotionally disturbed person” or EDP to refer to people with mental illness. They’re in no way qualified to determine if someone has a mental illness, so EDP is their catchall term.
When a community member is concerned about someone’s wellbeing, the police may do a so-called “wellness check”. Imagine being at home, not well, and perhaps paranoid, and having uniformed cop(s) showing up unannounced at your door. That doesn’t exactly create a supportive atmosphere. Recently, a Canadian Indigenous woman was killed by a police officer who went to do a “wellness check” on her. There’s still a lot that’s not clear about that particular case, but regardless, police and wellness check seems like a less than ideal combination.
The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services published a guide that refers to “the problem of people mental illness”, “understanding your local problem”, and “responding to the problem of people with mental illness.” Granted, this guide was originally published in 2006, and problem-oriented policing is a specific approach, but it still speaks to stigma and police understanding (or lack thereof) of mental illness.
Lost in Translation
I found an interesting report prepared by my local police department in Vancouver, Canada called Lost In Translation. It’s from 2010, so it’s hard to say how much it reflects the current situation, but the report expressed concern with the level of resources police were needing to devote to mental health-related calls. It argued that the healthcare system should be doing more. One particular area of concern was the frequency of calls to track down patients who had gone AWOL from hospital, including people who were certified under the Mental Health Act. Are police the best people to handle that kind of thing?
Of course, there will always be budget wrangling and finger-pointing, but looking at it from a defund the police perspective, wouldn’t it make more sense to have the health care system deal with non-criminal matters rather than the police?
Experiences of people with mental illness
A 2011 report from the Mental Health Commission of Canada looked at the interactions mentally ill people have with the police. They interviewed people with bipolar disorder or a psychotic disorder who had previous contact with the police. Some of the findings were:
- 77% had been handcuffed or otherwise physically restrained
- 28% reported being pushed/shoved by an officer, and 17% reported being punched or kicked
- 32% reported police had pointed a weapon at them, while 8% had a weapon used against them
The literature review conducted in preparing the same report found that:
- 40% of people with mental illness have been arrested at some point in their life
- 30% have had police involved in their mental health care at some point
- 5% of police encounters involve people with mental health issues
- 40% of police encounters involving a mentally ill person are not related to any criminal activity
A couple of years ago, the mental health and addictions transitional program where I work was sending a patient to hospital because she was suicidal. The paramedics didn’t feel comfortable transporting her, as they wouldn’t be able to stop her if she bolted. So the police were involved, and I learned that their standard practice is to handcuff people they’re taking to hospital involuntarily. My jaw dropped. Luckily they didn’t handcuff her, or I would’ve gone full-on batshit crazy on them. Being suicidal is not a crime. Going to hospital shouldn’t require police.
Addictions
The police frequently deal with addiction-related behaviours. While organized gangs handling the supply chain are clearly a police issue, individual users shouldn’t have to be. Making treatment more readily available would probably be a more effective approach than treating individual addicts like criminals. Taking the police out of the picture may also save lives in the opioid epidemic, as people wouldn’t have to worry about getting charged with possession if they call 911 to report a friend’s OD.
In California, drug possession is a felony offense. Under their three strikes and you’re out law, someone could have been sent to prison for life for three drug possession charges, before a 2012 legislative change requiring the third strike to be a violent offense. Imagine all the money that could be poured into rehab rather than having the police and prisons handling addictions through the war on drugs approach.
Would this require Medicare for all?
This isn’t an issue for countries like Canada that have public health care. I don’t know enough about the logistics of the U.S. healthcare mess system to know what it could look like to shift resources from the police to the healthcare system. Removing the police as the first line of response in the community would require a more assertive model of delivering mental health care, and how would that work if you didn’t have the kind of insurance that they happen to accept?
In countries like Canada, it seems like less of a logistical disaster to shift some of the police role over to the healthcare system. This is just speculation, but to take over a broad spectrum of the mental illness-related encounters that police have, there would probably need to be a role with some type of constabulary powers within the health care system for the purpose of applying legislation pertaining to mental health. That might require creativity, but it’s not rocket science. At the very least, partnerships between police and health services would be an improvement over the current state of affairs.
Police/mental health partnerships
The police force in the city where I live has partnered with the local health authority to operate “car 87/88”. This involves an unmarked police car, a plainclothes police officer, and a mental health nurse. They attend mental health emergency situations, and they also track down people who’ve been certified under the Mental Health Act in the community but couldn’t be taken to hospital.
If they’re attending a call and someone needs to be taken to hospital involuntarily, the police officer may do a Mental Health Act apprehension. Alternately, the on-call psychiatrist will be called to assess the person for certification under Mental Health Act. An ambulance then transports the person to hospital. The car 87/88 police officer can accompany as needed and the nurse can follow behind in the police car.
This is a good system, but the biggest problem I see is that there’s only one car per shift for a large urban centre. It seems much more civilized to have a more subtle police presence (unmarked car, no uniform), a highly experienced mental health nurse, and transportation in an ambulance (what with mental illness being a medical issue).
Moving away from a police response
I’m by no means suggesting doing away with the police or defunding them entirely. As long as there is crime, then there will be a role for police. I’m suggesting that mental health intervention is a health care function; it’s not a police function unless there are specific characteristics that make it a police function, like the presence of aggression or weapons.
Regardless of the details of what it would look like, I’m pretty sure that shifting non-criminal encounters with mentally ill people from the police to the health care system would be a good thing. Mental illness isn’t a crime, nor should it be treated like one.
My latest book, A Brief History of Stigma, looks at the nature of stigma, the contexts in which it occurs, and how to challenge it most effectively.
You can find it on Amazon and Google Play.
There’s more on stigma on Mental Health @ Home’s Stop the Stigma page.
I agree that shifting non-criminal encounters with mentally ill people from the police to the health care system would be a good thing. I also saw many patients arriving in a great big police van, handcuffed and surrounded by armed officer. I immediately told them, ‘you’re on our territory now, take the cuffs off immediately.”
Some of them got really stroppy, saying ‘he/she’s been attacking our officers’ and while I don’t agree with any violence, I can imagine how a patient might have felt, seeing officers arrive at their doors – just as you said.
And handcuffing someone who’s unwell is only going to agitate them more.
This is disturbing. It does happen here and my friend worked on several report. I am still unsure what is going below media radar.
Probably a fair bit never makes it into the public eye.
I feel like if “defunding” the police will help de-militarize them, I’m all for it!
Yes, that’s a change that’s very much overdue.
I think funding more mental health community workers would be a good thing. Whether you get the money from defunding the police is another question. Although it looks different from the UK than most countries because our police are not routinely armed. (I get slightly freaked out when I go abroad and see armed police!)
I think realistically the police are going to have some contact with the mentally ill under any system though.
Some contact is definitely inevitable. But here, at least, police have a high level of involvement, and it doesn’t make sense to me for that to be the case in non-criminal matters.
The stats you’ve laid out are a bit disconcerting, but in line with what I knew about the problem. :/
I hope some kind of change can happen soon, because this shouldn’t be okay.
Nope. It shouldn’t. There have been movements in the U.S. to stop the incarceration of persons with diagnosed mental illnesses, etc. I don’t know where they’re at with that right now. I haven’t heard anything. :/
It’s totally absurd how many people are incarcerated in the U.S.
You know, though… there are so many absurdities going on here, I don’t know if there’s any hope for us… without a revolution, which we may be seeing the beginnings of one now. Still, I am pessimistic in this arena. We are as corrupt as corrupt gets.
Yeah, past experience doesn’t bode well for the future.
Agreed, and in many areas… :/
I dont see why they cant have a division of mental health workers employed by the PD with some basic law enforcement training. Take some of the budget an split it. Maybe some current officers would like more mental health training to be of more use in the community. Let the ego tripping power people deal with the violent crimes, let the people who joined to help get more training and BE of some help🤷🏼♀️
I for one completely advocate for resources to be better spent in assisting folks with mental health issues with care rather than militant force. I had an unfortunate experience with the first responders here in Florida where I live when my partner, at a loss for what to do while I was in the middle of a scary dissociative episode, called 911. A horror show unfolded for me completely violating my dignity civil rights. Let’s face it, too many police officers aren’t equipped to handle folks in undergoing mental health crises and we need a better way. A softer and more gentle way. If you’re interested in reading about my experience in detail, here is the link. It’s my first ever published piece that I wrote for a recovery magazine here in South Florida. Thank you for this thoughtful post my friend 🙏
What a horrendous experience. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.
Thank you. It took me six months to process and then I used that experience to shed a light on what happens when 911 is called. Thankfully the fire fighters were kind and helped to ease my fears but oh boy did the police NOT help.
I love that you are keeping this topic open for discussion. I feel if more people understood it would be helpful. Thank you for this post😊
In Minneapolis, police receive 16 weeks of formal training. Their on-the-job training can include watching your training officer commit murder.
We would like to see a different model. Your Trevor Noah video from a few days ago said if police are a hammer, everything they see is a nail. George Floyd was a person, not a nail.
Retributive justice as enacted by police equates to war. Extreme violence. Harm.
We want someday to read about restorative justice and other models of peace keeping.
This post was very timely. It met our needs to try to consider how love and empathy can be part of solutions. Thank you ❤️❤️❤️
It would be nice if at least there could be some sort of division and have a set people who are highly trained at handling dangerous situations in the safest possible way who could be sent to incidents where that’s the type of situation going on, and a different set of people highly trained in empathetic communication and de-escalation to deal with everything else. Expecting the same people to do both means they end up not being able to do either very effectively.
Maybe people call 911 about violent crimes and 91x for everything else? Deescalation skills sounds useful for everyone❤️
I would really like for something like that to be put in place. ❤️
You’re absolutely right. I find it frightening how much the police are relied on for things that really don’t need the police at all, and when they’re called in, many seem to punish them for it.
Yes it’s a broken way of doing things.
Such an interesting post! I used to have a lot of experience with police getting involved when I was emotionally disturbed. I didn’t want to detail the experience of being shoved into a police car when the topic of police violence came up in the #blacklivesmatter thing, because I’m white. Still, my experiences have been pretty traumatic.
I can imagine. No one should be put in a police car unless they’ve committed a crime.
I live in a small town. In 2009-ish (I was in Des Moines at this point), one of our police officers tasered a mentally ill woman in the backseat of his cruiser. She was unable to touch him. She was hogtied & banging around, screaming. Because she didn’t do anything wrong but that’s a whole other story. She couldn’t hurt anyone, she couldn’t touch anyone. Still, he leans back and tasers her.
At the very least, police officers should at least have major training in dealing with anyone in a mental health crisis.
https://who13.com/news/tasing-trouble-restrained-woman-tased/
Oh and all he received was week of suspension and he had to take classes on taser safety & uses. But I think it’s common sense that you don’t taser someone who can’t even touch you.
People need to get fired for that kind of crap.
Wow, that’s so disturbing.
All for this!! I know it’s just the beginning, but several major cities in the US are already starting to talk about defunding the police and instead investing that money into community resources. In cities like Boston (which has the highest police budget in the US), the amount that they want to take from the police budget is not nearly enough, but it’s a great start.
Any start is a very good thing.
This TOTALLY adds a whole new perspective to what “defunding the police” means to me. Especially the part where they show up at your door regarding an EDP. I was approached at my home this way, but it was because I’d called the hospital first to indicate I wasn’t doing too well…and it was unnerving to see them first. With the ambulance showing up second. Hopefully this will shed some light on the system in this regard.
If someone was concerned about their physical health it would be just the ambulance that comes, but if it’s mental health all of a sudden the police are leading the way? It doesn’t make sense.
Haha right?! Totally weird
Thank you for your post. As someone with psychosis who has suffered greatly due to aggressive policing and untrained officers I found your post refreshing. I think there is a lot that needs to be done, but your article makes a lot of sense for someone like me.
I’ve been beaten, put in a chokehold, and actually shot by the police myself. I should’ve been dead but the universe had other plans for me. I look forward to one day being part of a coordinated effort to bring more training, awareness, and hope to policing and the community. Your blog shows a lot of insight and I’m grateful to have stumbled upon it.
Major change is so overdue. What you’ve experienced should never be happening.
Yet no reformation from the powers that be ever remains for the long haul because it is appeasement. In time the power will multiply through the National Guard and eventual martial law which will take all “freedoms” away. This movement is playing right into the hands of corrupt authority to lag low and then come back in full force.
Such an interesting topic with well written views. Many thanks. Let’s hope they get it right, by supporting people who are struggling, rather than creating a new hole for vulnerable people to fall into.
Absolutely.