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We Should Know How Many People With Mental Illnesses Are Killed By Police by Mary Zdanowicz, Executive Director, Treatment Advocacy Center (Reprinted with permission from Treatment Advocacy Center’s Catalyst, Vol. 3, No. 3 May/June 2001 Catalyst is published the Treatment Advocacy Center, which works to educate civic, legal, criminal justice, and legislative communities to promote the benefits of assisted treatment in an effort to decrease homelessness, jailings, suicide, violence and other devastating consequences caused by lack of treatment. In April, tensions mounted after Cincinnati police fatally shot a young black man. The citizens of that city are not the only ones counting the number of black males who are shot in encounters with police. The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report in March that compiled statistics about justifiable homicides by police (in the report, all killings by police are called justifiable homicides). The report analyzes justifiable homicides based on race, gender and age of the person killed. In 1998, the most recent year for which data is available, justifiable homicides occurred at a rate of 1.4 per million people in the general population in the U.S.1 However, the justifiable homicide rate that year in the black population was 4.7 per million, 3.5 times higher than the general population. While the rate of justifiable homicides in the general population did not change from 1988 to 1998,2 the encouraging note is that the rate for the black population declined 16% during that period (from 5.7 per million in 1988 to 4.8 per million in 1998). In contrast, there is no official count of the number of persons with severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI) who are shot by police each year. And despite an unfortunate wealth of such tragic incidents, no organization of any type keeps track of them. The Treatment Advocacy Center records details on some in its Preventable Tragedies Database. The Database summarizes selected U.S. newspaper accounts of the consequences of non-treatment for individuals with SPMI, including suicides, victimization, violence, and police shootings. But, the daily search from which the Database is compiled does not include all newspapers, police shootings are not always covered in the press, and it is not always reported that a person who is shot has a severe mental illness. Therefore, we know that the Database cannot possibly contain all incidents of police shootings of persons with SPMI. Still, the Database shows that at least 37 people with SPMI were killed by police in 1998 [see chart]. Even this conservative estimate indicates that people with SPMI were killed at a rate of 5.3 per million,3 13% higher than the rate in the black population. The fact that this is a conservative estimate cannot be overemphasized. Lacking any official statistics on the number of prior shootings, it is unknown whether the rate of SPMI shootings is declining, as in the black community, or--as we dread and fear--on the rise. We ask you to join us in requesting the Department of Justice to analyze this national crisis of people with mental illness being killed in altercations with police, just as it did the equally profound questions raised in Cincinnati. TAC Preventable Tragedies Database: http://www.psychlaws.org/ep.asp Treatment Advocacy Center is a non-profit organization in Arlington, Virginia dedicated to eliminating barriers to treatment for individuals suffering from severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness. (www.psychlaws.org) Notes: 1 There were 367 justifiable homicides in 1998 when the U.S. population was 270 million. Jodi M. Brown & Patrick A. Langan, POLICING AND HOMICIDE, 1976-98: JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE BY POLICE, POLICE OFFICERS MURDERED BY FELONS, BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS (2001); U.S. Census Bureau, Monthly Estimates of the United States Population, (visited May 4, 2001) <http://www.census.gov/population/ estimates/nation/intfile1-1.txt>2 There were 339 justifiable homicides in 1988 when the U.S. population was 244 million. POLICING AND HOMICIDE, 1976-98; Monthly Estimates of the United States Population.3 There were 37 justifiable homicides of SPMI persons in 1998. The Surgeon General estimates that 2.6% of the population in the U.S. have SPMI. Therefore, there were 7 million SPMI people in the U.S. in 1998. MENTAL HEALTH: A REPORT OF THE SURGEON GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES (1999).
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