On Tuesday, 25-year-old Kajieme Powell was shot by St. Louis police responding to a call that he had stolen two canned energy drinks and a packet of pastries from a local convenience store. As a video of the incident reveals, Powell had been stalking the sidewalk in front of the store, the cans on the ground before him, when the police arrived. A few moments later, he was dead.
As a result of the nation’s patchy, frequently inadequate mental-health-care system, police are all too often the first responders to mental-health crises. Powell’s death is a worst-case reminder of why this is can be disastrous.
[For more of this story, written by Jesse Singal, go to http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/08/police-kajieme-powell-and-mental-illness.html]
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