Saturday, October 22, 2016

Police Officer Training for Dealing with Individuals Who Have a Mental Illness

Today, I read an article in the Austin American Statesman about a 21 year old boy, Garret McKinney, being fatally shot by a police officer about a year ago. The shooting happened on September 21, 2015.

The shooting after Officer Keele was trying to detain McKinney for "obstructing traffic on a highway." When Keele tried to detain McKinney, McKinney punched Keele in the head. Keele then fired his Taser at McKinney, but it had no effect. Then McKinney dislocated Keele shoulder, leaving Keele unable to defend himself.  In response, Keele shot McKinney two times in the chest. When McKinney still came at Keele, Keele fired two more shots. McKinney died from the gun shot wounds.

What Keele did not know is that McKinney had paranoid schizophrenia. Had he known, would he reacted differently to the situation? Police officers tend to get very little training in how to deal with mentally ill individuals. With this lack of training, how would they know that someone may be mentally ill?

We hear fairly often about how mentally ill individuals are shot by police officers. It has been said over and over again, in our class and in the media, how police officers get very little training dealing with individuals, especially in vulnerable circumstances. Are we setting up our officers for failure?

 I believe we are. How can we expect our officers, who may have not had any previous experience interacting with individuals who have a mental illness, to interact effectively with this population if they are given little training on what to do in these type of situations? Also, they need training to teach our officers on how to spot someone who may have a mental illness, so they can be prepared to deal with the circumstance effectively.

It is always upsetting to hear about circumstances like this. Especially when you know that the situation could have been avoided or handled in a nonfatal manner. I would like to hear your thoughts on this issue.

1 comment:

  1. situations like these are sad because this situations wouldn't happen if we simply provided more training to the officers, I also think people in general should be a bit more informed of what do do in situations like this.

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