Justice Department lawyers investigating police agencies for claims
of racial discrimination and excessive force are increasingly turning up
a different problem: officers' interactions with the mentally ill.
The latest example came in Baltimore, where a
critical report on that department's policies found that officers end up
in unnecessarily violent confrontations with mentally disabled people
who in many instances haven't even committed crimes. The report cited
instances of officers using a stun gun to subdue an agitated man who
refused to leave a vacant building and of spraying mace to force a
troubled person — said by his father to be unarmed and off his
medications — out of an apartment.
Though past federal investigations have addressed the problem, the
Baltimore report went a step further: It was the first time the Justice
Department has explicitly found that a police department's policies
violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. The finding is intended to
chart a path to what federal officials hope will be far-reaching
improvements, including better training for dispatchers and officers,
diversion of more people to treatment rather than jail and stronger
relationships with mental health specialists.
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