'Mental illness is not a crime, it's a medical condition,' one retired sergeant from the Rochester Police Department told Newsweek.
A makeshift memorial for Daniel Prude is seen prior to a march on September 06, 2020 in Rochester, New York. Prude died after being arrested on March 23 by Rochester police officers who had placed a"spit hood" over his head and pinned him to the ground while restraining him.
Prude's death, which only became public knowledge when his family released the body camera footage in a news conference last week, prompted several nights of protests in the city of Rochester. Americans with mental illnesses are 16 times more likely to be killed by police during encounters than the general population. A quarter of the nearly 1,000 people shot by police officers in 2018 had a mental illness, according to a report issued this month byExperts say the tragedies in Rochester and Salt Lake City are reflective of a systemic law enforcement problem: the lack of scaled-up resources and training officers need to effectively respond to mental health calls.
Some departments, like those in Rochester and Salt Lake City, offer more selective training through their crisis intervention teams. Those teams typically include 40 hours of learning how to de-escalate and approach incidents involving people who are mentally ill. But some experts say it's still not an adequate amount of time for the number of mental health calls officers receive.
"I was a police officer for 23 years," he said."I've seen police do amazing things on mental health calls. But unfortunately we see too often when the police respond and bad things happen." That's the kind of law enforcement reform Sean Delehanty, a Republican legislator for Monroe County, New York would like to see Rochester move toward in the future.
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