When Dealing With Crazy Is Better Than Calling the (Crazier) Cops

Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin. | Mother Jones:

'via Blog this'Mark didn't want to call the police. For one, he didn't think Houston was dangerous, just upset, despairing. Also, Mark read the news. The Santa Rosa cops had killed two mentally ill men they'd been called to intervene with in the last six years, one case resulting in a federal civil rights suit. This is not a problem unique to Santa Rosa—or to greater Sonoma County, which in 2009 paid a $1.75 million settlement to the family of a mentally ill 16-year-old whom sheriff's deputies shot eight times. There's no comprehensive data yet, but mental illness appears to be a factor in so many arrest-related deaths that the Justice Department .... ...the Justice Department has considered adding mental-health status to its national database of such deaths. Just last year, for example, the DOJ found the Portland, Oregon, police department had a "pattern or practice of using excessive force…against people with mental illness," including eight shootings in 18 months and the beating to death of an unarmed man in 2006.

"All those kids get shot by the police," he told Marilyn. "Just let me handle it."

So Mark didn't call the police, and Houston didn't get any additional help. Ten days before all the really bad things happened...

 Ten percent of US homicides, he estimates based on an analysis of the relevant studies, are committed by the untreated severely mentally ill—like my schizophrenic cousin. And, he says: "I'm thinking that's a conservative estimate."