"He thought everyone in there was a vampire and they were trying to suck his blood. He called me a witch. He thought everyone was trying to cut off his arms and legs.” These are the words of the mother of Calvin Clark, a 20-year-old with bipolar disorder, who was encountered by the #lawenforcement officers on his way to Seattle in October 2016. Calvin committed suicide in 2019, after his mistreatment by police led to a cycle of arrests, jail time, and further mistreatment. Police’s lack of understanding of mental disorders will likely lead to further deaths down the line. They should not be the ones responding to mental health calls.
According to an internal interview with Los Angeles police conducted a few years ago, nearly 37% of police shootings in a given year were aimed at suspects who had documented mental illness. Even more, almost 10% percent of 9-1-1 calls involve mental health situations. The mental health nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center says that one third of the cases that are brought to the hospital’s emergency room in psychiatric crisis are brought in by the police. These facts depict the severity and volume of police interaction with suspects with mental illness, as well as the vulnerability and risk factor for those with mental health issues.
Although several programs... including the 40-hour Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training module... have been launched in recent decades, the results have remained futile. How can a 40-hour course overcome the police mindset? The standard thought pattern of law enforcement personnel cannot be adjusted in just 40 hours of training. It’s not enough. The programs have never delivered the desired results. When it comes down to it, the time that a police trainee receives during training for mental health crisis intervention is far less than the time they spend on learning how to use a gun.
The suicide of Calvin Clark in 2019 is one of the notorious examples of the police’s inability to deal with such cases. Though documented as a suicide, some would call it murder at the hands of the law enforcement system. The Treatment Advocacy Center has stated that people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter than others.
Even if a person with mental illness survives the first encounter with the police, once they enter the criminal justice system, dark and gloomy realities await them. Even if police receive training with ‘tips and techniques,’ there are still legal barriers and obstructions that compel officers to make arrests - which then lead to further issues and the potential for mistreatment by the criminal justice system.
There is a startling lack of psychiatric facilities and consistent, appropriate treatment in many states. While waiting for their trial in jail the conditions of mentally ill people further deteriorate. In one specific occurrence in 2016, 24-year-old Jamycheal Mitchell was accused of stealing some food items worth around $5 -- he helplessly died in jail while waiting for a space in a mental health facility. Proper and consistent treatment is required for such people. Very few if any jails have sufficient non-police staff (nurses, psychiatrists, and social workers) to aid in the treatment of people who have any sort of mental disorder. This only further perpetuates lack of trust in police and the criminal justice system overall.
"Once an individual with mental illness is caught up in the criminal justice system, it's a trap," said Jerry, the mother of Calvin Clark. No one calls the police if someone faces cardiac arrest, simply because police are not trained for such health emergencies. Similarly, police must not be called alone in dealing with a person having a mental illness. "This is the only medical illness that we use criminal justice to respond to,” said John Snook, the executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center. While training programs may help in building empathy in police towards the mentally disturbed people, it absolutely is not the solution; police and the criminal justice system should not be the ones to respond to calls related with suspected mental-health issues.
