In matters of mental health, do we ask police to do too much?
“We’re asking cops to do too much in this country,” Chief Brown said. “We are. Every societal failure, we put it off on the cops to solve. Not enough mental health funding. Let the cop handle it. Not enough drug addiction funding. Let’s give it to the cops. ... Schools fail. Give it to the cops. Seventy percent of the African American community is being raised by single women. Let’s give it to the cops to solve that, as well. That’s too much to ask.”
He was being honest, and he’s run into similar frustrations in Chicago. For example, an alarming number of 911 calls are for nonemergencies. We should not tie up police with nonemergencies when other agencies or organizations, such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness HelpLine (1-800-950-NAMI), can offer better nonemergency assistance.
Coincidentally, two Chicago lawmakers have introduced legislation in the state’s General Assembly to establish an alternative response system in every Illinois 911 emergency district, to take some of the load off the current system. State Sen. Robert Peters and Rep. Kelly Cassidy introduced the Community Emergency Services and Support Act to provide such resources as mental and behavioral health professionals or, when appropriate, an ambulance.
“As a society we need to focus not only on making sure police don’t do the wrong thing or right thing,” Harold Pollack, co-director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, told me, “but also, who else — what other agencies — can come in and help, not in the context of defunding the police but ... complementing the police.”
Discussing a case such as Daniel Prude’s, Pollack observed, we should ask: Do we know social workers, mental health professionals and others who can play a part in such episodes so police can focus on public safety?
Indeed, social service experts tell me that people who know someone with mental health issues too often call 911 when a nonprofit agency like NAMI can offer better nonemergency assistance.
Unfortunately, in Illinois, among other states, an old funding problem endures: Chronically low reimbursement rates cause many health service providers to turn away Medicaid clients, even though low-income patients often have the greatest need.
And when people who need help fall through safety nets like that, Pollack said, “Police very often become the public face of failures that occurred in less visible systems.”
I’m still an advocate for police accountability as they pursue their duty to serve and protect the public. But sometimes, as Brown has said in Chicago, they can use a little help.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
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