The fatal shooting by police of a mentally unstable California man illuminates the risks of a system in which mental health resources are severely underfunded and law enforcement are often relied upon to respond to mental health crises, according to Reuters.
Alfred Olango, 38, an immigrant from Uganda, was shot and killed by one police officer in the San Diego county of El Cajon as another officer who had been trained to deescalate mental health crises attempted to subdue him with a Taser, police said, according to the report.
Budgets for mental health services in San Diego have been tightening for decades, and the city has experienced a doubling of mental health-related 911 calls since 2009, according to the report.
"This is a systemic issue across the country," said Maggie Merritt, executive director of the Steinberg Institute, a mental health policy research and advocacy group in Sacramento, according to the report.
Police are often required to undergo special training to learn how to safely interact with and subdue people going through mental health crises. In California, officers are required to take 15 hours of training.
Still, as cities increasingly rely on police to handle situations involving those with mental health issues, confrontations sometimes turn deadly. In 2015, more than a third of the people shot by police in Los Angeles had mental health issues, according to the report. Across the nation, Americans with severe mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed by police than civilians without such disorders, according to the report.
However, some mental health advocates, such as Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said the underlying problem is not lack of training for police officers — it's the lack of mental health services that have led many of the mentally ill to become homeless or depend on family members who are ill-equipped to properly care for them.
"The reasons for the problems you're witnessing today have little or nothing to do with police training and have everything to do with generations of politicians who have let the mental health system collapse in this country," Mr. Pasco said, according to the report. "It's not the police officers' fault."