Police reform needs mental health provisions

The police reform bill recently signed by Gov. Ned Lamont is an important step forward in holding law enforcement accountable. Unfortunately, it doesn’t address the way Connecticut responds to individuals experiencing mental health crises, which must remain a major component of efforts to defund or unbundle the police.

It’s clear that police officers have a mixed record as mental health first responders given their dire lack of training in safe, appropriate mental health intervention. Too often, this leads to the unnecessary arrest of individuals — men and women whose diagnoses make it difficult to ask for help or seek their own treatment. Instead of receiving needed care, they’re incarcerated and subjected to the trauma of imprisonment. In the worst cases, they are seriously injured or killed by police officers. We know this happens much more often when the persons being confronted are from minority communities.

Take Mubarak Soulemane, a 19-yearold with schizophrenia who was shot by a Connecticut state trooper this past January. Soulemane was well-known among New Haven police. According to his family, officers had escorted him to

Yale New Haven Hospital approximately 10 times in the last four years. With that history, there was a very real opportunity to save Soulemane — to recognize he was experiencing a mental health crisis and treat him with compassion instead of as a danger to society.

It doesn’t have to be this way. As a mental health attorney, I have led private psychiatric interventions and know firsthand that violence and arrest are not predetermined. Our team works together to ensure the best possible outcomes for persons in distress. Without uniforms or weapons, we ensure legal entry into a home, evaluate the individual and determine whether hospitalization is necessary. We only call the police if he or she will not voluntarily agree to treatment. It is a last resort.

Similar models are beginning to take hold. Across the country, many communities now benefit from Mobile Crisis Response Teams, which offer same-day interventions from on-call mental health professionals. These individuals are trained to respond to crises in a manner that is least damaging and more likely to result in a therapeutic outcome.

To continue serving as the first line of defense to mental health crises, police departments have real work to do. They must bring in licensed, experienced mental health professionals to provide comprehensive, ongoing training focused on mental health and crisis intervention. This must begin with new recruits and repeat annually at a minimum. More extensive training should be provided to dedicated mental health units who intervene specifically when the person in question is known to have a mental illness. Ideally, such units would not just have police trained in mental health, but also mental health professionals who, together with officers, respond to calls.

Just as crucially, police departments must win back community trust. Many people are hesitant to call 911 for help with a mentally ill loved one due to fear that he or she will be viewed as a criminal threat — hurt, killed or incarcerated instead of directed to treatment. Such mistrust deprives communities of resources that could provide significant and much-needed assistance. It also makes communities less supportive of funding initiatives to help police departments evolve — a paradox as improvements are often only possible with funding.

I commend Connecticut for the police reform measures it has green-lighted thus far. Now the state, along with our own 49 other states, must build on this work to best ensure the health and safety of residents with mental illness.