Odds were not in favor of Black man shot by cops
PHILADELPHIA — Before Walter Wallace Jr. died at the hands of Philadelphia police, his need for mental health services seemed apparent. During his past interactions with the criminal justice system — Wallace had been convicted and jailed for assault and robbery — judges repeatedly tried to get him mental health treatment. His family said that when they called 911 on the afternoon of Oct. 26, they had wanted an ambulance to come.
As recently as the previous Friday, Wallace had visited the West Philadelphia Consortium, a mental health crisis response center. Behavioral health experts who worked with him said the 27yearold had shown so much improvement that they planned on starting his job search process soon.
The crisis response center was not notified when Wallace suffered a mental health crisis outside his home Oct. 26. And when the police showed up, everything seemed to work against him — from his gender and race, to a 44yearold state law some experts deem outdated, to how law enforcement handles mental illness, even the fact that police didn’t have the equipment they need to subdue rather than kill. What they all reveal, experts say, is a system stacked against people like Wallace.
The very reason the family sought help — Wallace’s mental health — placed him at much higher risk when police responded to the call.
The Treatment Advocacy Center estimates that at least 1 in 4 fatal encounters with police involves an individual with an untreated severe mental illness and that people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter.
“If I have a heart attack and I call 911, there’s a pretty good chance that I land in the emergency room,” said Jack Rozel, the medical director for Resolve crisis services at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Western Psychiatric Hospital. “But if I have a psychotic break and I call 911, there’s still a chance I could land in the emergency room, but I could also be jailed, injured or killed.”
In Pennsylvania, a person can be involuntarily committed only if they are a “clear and present danger” to themselves or others. The restriction was passed in a 1976 law. And while some experts believe that mental health law has held up reasonably well for the last 44 years, others believe that Pennsylvania’s requirement for involuntary commitment can cause people to not receive the help they need in time.
Generally, Morse noted, people with mental illness are no more prone to violence than anyone else.
But a 2018 study published in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry found that 23% of individuals killed during interactions with the police demonstrated signs of mental illness, and that rates of death for African Americans with mental illness were the highest at 26 per million.