The following statement was provided by civil rights attorney Sanford Rubenstein.
I
presently represent four families of mentally ill persons killed by
police in New York City within the last 8 months: the families of James Owens, Dwayne Jeune, Ariel Galarza and Erickson Brito. If you add to those deaths and the killing of Deborah Danner,
who suffered from schizophrenia, by an NYPD officer in the Bronx, that
makes five mentally ill persons killed by the NYPD in the last 11
months.
As
of late July 2017, only 16% of NYPD officers were trained in how to
handle cases involving the emotionally disturbed. Certainly that number
has to become 100%. Just as important, we desperately need a task force
of experts to look at the protocol that presently exists to determine
how training can be improved and what other measures can be enacted to
prevent the all too frequent deadly confrontations between the mentally
ill and police.
We
need to curb what appears to be a shoot first and ask questions later
mentality of police who respond when 911 is called for help by a family
member of a mentally ill person. In addition, this task force has to
look at why present protocol is not properly followed by police who
respond to 911 calls involving the mentally ill and particularly why
police not trained in dealing with the emotionally ill fail to call
emergency medical service personnel when they are needed.
The
creation of this task force to make recommendations for a complete
overhaul of the way police interact with the mentally ill is long
overdue. I urge this body to create either an independent task force to
specifically address this issue or to make sure that this issue is
addressed as a significant component of a broader task force to look at
police practices and procedures.
The killings of the mentally ill in this city by police must stop.
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