In January 2011, wheelchair-bound Randal Dunklin, 55, was denied services at a mental health clinic in San Francisco. Outside the clinic, he grew upset and began vandalizing cars. He pulled out a knife, prompting police to arrive at the scene. When he wouldn't drop the weapon, plainclothes officers pepper-sprayed him, and Dunklin stabbed one of them in the arm. The police shot him.
Dunklin survived, but many in need of mental health services who find themselves in similar situations aren’t so lucky. KQED, a San Francisco-based public media outlet, recently found that 11 out of the 19 people killed by the San Francisco Police Department from 2005 to 2013 -- or more than half -- suffered from mental illness.
San Francisco, which has a substantial population of mentally ill people, has struggled for years to address emergency calls to police involving people in mental distress. The famously progressive city’s troubles shine a light on what has become a nationwide problem.
Indeed, San Francisco's situation is hardly unique. Over the summer, police fatally shot mentally ill people in Missouri, Arizona and elsewhere in California.
"How does a police officer accommodate someone behaving erratically and holding a knife?" history professor David Perry asked in a recent CNN op-ed, noting that police training is often at odds with effective ways to deal with the mentally ill in conflict situations.
[For more of this story, written by Lydia O'Connor, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...lness_n_5993122.html]
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