REDUCTION OF POLICE CAUSED FATALITIES 1.BACKGROUND AND STATEMENT OF NEED CURRENT CONDITION: Confrontations between private citizens with mental health issues and police officers have increased in recent years. Several of these situations have resulted in the deaths of mentally ill persons at the hands of police officers. The Governor has requested a long-range plan to drastically reduce these incidences. CAUSES OF CURRENT CONDITION: Government reduction in spending for mental health hospitals, for example the closing of Damasch State Hospital, have put people with severe mental health problems back into the communities. In an article in the May 25, 2000 edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, by Robert L. Jamieson Jr. and Kimberly A.C. Wilson state that “The potential for conflict has never been greater. Most mentally ill people are no longer warehoused in government run institutions. Across the country, recent cuts in mental health funding have jeopardized treatment for millions.” “ Health advocates and law enforcement groups estimate that one of everyten police calls involve a person with a mental disorder.” (Jamieson)Since 1980, in Seattle Washington, ten out of the thirty of the people killed by police showed signs of being mentally ill. During the year 2000, in Portland, Oregon, two of the people that were killed by police were mentally ill or emotionally disturbed. Extrapolation of the Portland, Oregon numbers tends to show a similar number of police killings of mentally disturbed persons as has been experienced in Seattle Washington. WHAT HAS BEEN TRIED IN THE PAST: Training for a select few police officers to handle mental health related calls has been accomplished, and has helped some. But on a statewide basis not nearly enough has been done. Since 10% of the calls for police service involve mentally ill persons, the likelihood of an untrained officer respondi...
