Jordan Young shooting raises many questions

The police shooting of Jordan Young confronts us with yet another tragic — and potentially preventable — example of what too often goes wrong when potentially young, ill-trained officers are expected to deal with individuals who may be suffering a mental health crisis.

There are many critical questions that need answers such as whether unconscious racism was a factor in the actions of the officers involved.

Further, thus far, little attention has been paid to the fact that the Capital District Psychiatric Center Mobile Crisis Unit, which was specifically created to handle such situations, could have responded. Why wasn’t it called?

Equally importantly, why didn’t the Albany Police Department and the courts arrange for psychiatric intervention in response to Young’s previous encounters? Instead, they ran him through the usual criminal justice channels and allegedly abused him in the process.

Finally, how many more of Albany’s citizens with mental health issues have to be maimed or killed by police before the police department and Mayor Kathy Sheehan heed the urgent call of the Center for Law and Justice for the creation of a Public Safety Commission that decouples the addressing of public safety matters from the system of armed policing?

One more will be too many. Chris Mercogliano

Albany