When Headlines Mislead: Media Myths About Mental Health and Policing
Media stories blame police while flawed mental health policy fails the very people it claims to protect.
The news media is reminding us that May is National Mental Health Awareness Month. It is also a chilling reminder of how many current and former officers we lose every year to suicide. However, the articles and stories they are publishing about law enforcement are as always, inaccurate, and borderline libelous. The facts are there but the way they are framed and presented is completely deceptive of how additional advanced training would have produced a different outcome in the most tragic cases.
As a nation we are desensitized to a polarized news media that is bent on portraying one party or another in a negative light. I know several friends and former colleagues in law enforcement who support left wing and liberal causes. It is so unfair to them when the mainstream media, on both sides, paints law enforcement as right-wing zealots with a roller.
Mental health is huge today
Mental health has been a growing problem, but the chart swinging statistics that guide us are based on how people identify themselves and their mental issues. It is no secret that the current generation recognizes mental illness within themselves as a normal aspect of their personality.
To be fair, let’s sort my observations and opinions by virtue of what is evidence based and what it not. Data will back me up on this, but even in casual observances with young people that I have been in contact with, they would feel abnormal if there wasn’t some distinctive tic or disorder that they could share in a conversation, even with a bit of humble bragging.
Their attention to detail, fear of germs, their cleanliness, is all attributed to some negative phobia or personality disorder. Today’s generation throws around a serious lower intestine malfunction, terms that would make a room gasp in 1980, only to praise their own commitment to perfection. They are armchair psychologists on the mental health issues of their parents too, even when their folks could make Ozzie and Harriet look like Woodstock hippies.
Here in my admittedly micro-observation of gifted people in the flower of their youth, they discuss the medications they are on for bi-polar disorder, anxiety and for clarity or focus. But these youthful young adults, taking on hyper-specialized majors and committing themselves to incredibly skilled and complicated careers in medical fields that pay well, but never what they are worth, have so much right about them such that there is nothing meaningful that there is anything wrong with them. Their only issue is that they are imperfect, like me, like you.
More mental health contact with law enforcement
That is the state of young people today. A friend took a command role at a major university and told me “…you would not believe how many students we Baker Act (Mental Health Involuntary Commitment), sometimes it is like all we do.” I worked closely with other officials at that school on sexual violence prevention programs and a director told me, “You wouldn’t believe how many parents drop their kids off here who have never gone on a single date.” Author Abigal Shrier (Substack:
) faces the issues head on in her book Bad Therapy. From her book description on Amazon:“In virtually every way that can be measured, Gen Z’s mental health is worse than that of previous generations. Youth suicide rates are climbing, antidepressant prescriptions for children are common, and the proliferation of mental health diagnoses has not helped the staggering number of kids who are lonely, lost, sad and fearful of growing up. What’s gone wrong with America’s youth?”
How can we have more mental health intervention than at any time in human history and have an illness trend that continues to drive toward the floor? Obviously, one but only one, of my conclusions is that mental health awareness programs have made healthy people become convinced that they must be sick to be normal. Shrier makes the insightful argument that there is a tremendous power imbalance when a youth is sent to mental health counseling compared with when an adult chooses to consult a therapist. Adults get to drop expensive therapists like a hot rock when it isn’t working. Youth don’t have that choice and the decision to keep the kid in therapy is based on the reports of the therapist. It is no coincidence that programs or parents with the ability to reliably pay are documented to get more treatment.
During this season, the media highlights stories how a mentally ill person was shot by police. The relative, on camera or voiceover, will tell the reporter that they called law enforcement to help that person, not shoot them dead. Another perennial cast member is the representative from a mental health advocacy or awareness organization calling for more training, especially Crisis Intervention Training. Sheriffs and chiefs will shake their heads at the loss and highlight their co-responder models and discuss their amazing track records of success.
It’s not every mental health call that results in an officer involved shooting. Generally, there is an issue with paranoid schizophrenia and a psychotic break. Access to both blunt and edged weapons are familiar markers. Most of the 911 calls state that they don’t know the last time that the person has taken their medicine. Are there occasions where responding officers act criminally? Those are exceedingly rare, and when they happen, they become national news stories.
We look back at two shootings just miles apart in Pennsylvania. This is from an article I wrote a year ago and those shootings sparked the widespread adoption of the Eugene, Oregon CAHOOTS model:
On September 13, 2020, Lancaster officers responded and before they even got to the door, Ricardo Munoz charges the officers wielding a knife and was shot by the officer in self-defense. The law firm representing the family has this statement on their website:
“Unfortunately, Lancaster police and many law enforcement agencies throughout the country are not trained or equipped to deal with mental health crises. Ricardo’s story highlights the desperate need to invest in social workers and other co-responders who can assist law enforcement when someone is experiencing a mental health crisis.”
In Philadelphia on October 26, 2020, Walter Wallace was shot charging officers with a knife. The law firm settled the wrongful death claim with a 2.5 million dollar award and a commitment from the city to purchase 14 million dollars in equipment and training from Taser. This would not have been the scenario to roll the dice on an electronic control device. Here is part of the statement from the law firm’s website:
“Wallace’s murder set off a powder keg of righteous anger throughout communities across the country including Philadelphia, leading to protests, riots, and violent conflicts with the police. The Philadelphia Police Officers who shot and killed Wallace were not equipped with tasers at the time of the shooting.”
Ironically, these videos serve as public service announcements explaining why police officers, rather than therapists, are sent to respond to these calls. There would have been dead therapists. In each case, cops were suddenly attacked by knife wielding charging maniacs. However, these cases inexplicably wound up as supporting columns in the police replacement movement.
The push for additional CIT training
So far, this May is no different. We have tragic story of an officer involved shooting that took the life of a mentally ill individual. There is the grieving family member who wishes their relative was still alive and that police had the proper training to address the complaint that they called 911 in their hour of need. There will be a local example in your media market.
Unfortunately, their relative was approaching the officer or officers, - in a recent video on a story like this, charging at ten feet per second – with two knives. Fortunately, it was cops instead of social workers that responded, or we would have some injured or dead social workers, and then law enforcement would have to locate the attacker. We have a huge issue with de-escalation. Only law enforcement has been trained.
There is no need to generalize mentally ill people as bad. Our dispatch signal for mental illness calls had a suffix of N for non-violent or V for openly violent. Every officer on the street quickly discovered that non-violent person could become violent extremely quickly. Even today, as the body camera video scrolls, viewed in isolation, everyone would say ‘Thank God for the police and their decisive action.’
Please keep all peace officers in your prayers.
Roland Clee served a major Florida police department as a Community Service Officer for more than 26 years. His career included uniformed patrol, training, media relations, intelligence, criminal investigations, and chief’s staff. He writes the American Peace Officer newsletter, speaks at public safety, recruiting and leadership conferences and helps local governments and public safety agencies through his business, CommandStaffConsulting.com. His work is frequently featured on LawOfficer.com, the only law enforcement owned major media presence in the public safety realm.
References
https://a.co/d/1LOzzYz
Important topic and analysis.
Thank you so much! I have persuasively dealt with this too many times to count! Police ARE NOT mental health providers! Is wildly inappropriate to turn our role into that. That would be akin to social workers responding to the two situations described in your article, and when fighting for their life later being blamed for not understanding interpersonal combativeness, and then criticized why they chose not to carry a legal commercially available taser… Or some ridiculous argument like that.
ON POINT as usual, my friend!