​

 

Detailed Policies and Procedures

​

It is already required that police departments comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA):

To comply with this act, as well as civil rights laws, departments must “adopt policies that give officers clear guidance on how to interact with people with physical, mental, or developmental disabilities.”1

​

However, mental health policies included in the ADA are rather flexible and thus lead to various interpretations. (Click Inadequate guidance and training under the Problems tab to learn more about the issues created by the flexibility enabled by the ADA). Reinterpreting Title II of the ADA to require CIT training would better protect persons with mental illness in police encounters:

A Note by Alexis Campbell analyzing the effectiveness of Title II and the CIT model using data from the Washington Post’s Fatal Force Database and a record of existing CIT training programs found the following results:

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

This hypothesis depicted in this table, R3, tested the impact of CIT training and Title II status on fatal police shootings of armed persons in mental health crisis. Results showed that neither CIT exposure nor “a circuit’s application of Title II to arrests” alone had a statistically significant impact on the number of armed persons with mental illness shot and killed by police officers. However, Training and Title II Status did have a statistically significant result when inputted into R3, suggesting that implementation of CT training programs and application of Title II together do lead to a “statistically significant decrease in the incidence of fatal shootings of armed persons in mental health crisis.”2 Thus, reinterpreting Title II of the ADA to require CIT training would best protect persons with mental illness from fatal police shootings and likely from some other potential injustices in police encounters. 

​

Bill AB-2054 proposed in California Legislature in early 2020 aimed to “enact the Community Response Initiative to Strengthen Emergency Systems Act or the C.R.I.S.E.S. Act.” This proposed bill offered improvements on the treatment of individuals with mental illness by the criminal justice system, among other reforms, but was vetoed by the Governor on September 9th, 2020: 3

In proposing the bill, the Californian Legislature found and declared that “the complexities of emergency issues surrounding crises in mental health [and other issues]…can, at times, be addressed more safely, with greater impact, and more cost-effectively and efficiently with community organizations, which often have deeper knowledge and understanding of the issues, trusted relationships with the people and communities involved, and specific knowledge and relationships surrounding the emergency.” However, “despite the innovative approaches led by community organizations, [California] does not have a policy, a set of protocols, or dedicated funding to support community organizations’ involvement in addressing emergencies.”4

 

The proposed Act thus sought to remedy these issues through establishing the C.R.I.S.E.S. Act Grant Pilot Program, which would “establish rules and regulations…with the goal of making grants to community organizations. Grantees [would] receive a minimum award of $250,000 per year.” This program would “create and strengthen community-based alternatives to law enforcement in response to crisis situations…in communities where there is a history and pattern of…people who are likely to face disproportionate police contact,” including people with disabilities and people facing mental health crisis.5

 

Though this bill would have likely had a significant impact on approach to mental health crises had it been enacted, it was vetoed in late 2020.6 A similar bill or policy that focuses on supporting community organizations could help create a more wholistic, community-based approach to mental health crises, which is the goal of many other models such as the CIT model.

 

Improvements for CIT or other police training curriculum:

A study by Jeffrey Fagan and Alexis Campbell, which analyzed fatal killings by police officers in the United States, presented data that suggested “two dimensions of police killings that should be incorporated into a curriculum designed to remediate the types of mistakes that lead to these fatal encounters.”7 One of these dimensions was the fact that 25.2% – or 1 in 4 – victims of police killings are persons experiencing mental health crises. Proposed curriculum to address this issue would involve incorporating other circumstances of fatal police encounters, such as situations involving persons who are both armed and in mental health crisis. Fagan and Campbell reasoned that in order to have a wider impact on police shootings and killings, revising and expanding curriculum to focus on decision making and “mistakes” is integral. To expand curriculum to include the range of fatal police encounters that occurs in the real world, curriculum would have to be both officer-centered and incident-centered.8

 

In addition to the improvements to be made in mental health training for police officers, some more general suggestions can be used by officers in encounters with individuals with mental illness to avoid escalation: 

The Department of Justice (DOJ) offered some recommendations on how to accommodate persons experiencing mental illness during police encounters. One such recommendation by the DOJ was that when police officers are aware that they are interacting with a person with mental illness, it “may be beneficial to check that the individual understands the officer’s commands.” For example, when issuing Miranda warnings, police officers are advised to ask the individual to repeat each phrase.9

​

Persons with mental illness should also be made more aware of rights they hold in dealing with the criminal justice system:

Since the Department of Justice (DOJ) is tasked with enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), individuals with mental illness can pursue enforcement of the ADA by filing a complaint through the Department of Justice, which can “conduct compliance reviews to determine an entity’s compliance with Title II” of the ADA.10 Further, awareness of protections offered by the ADA in the first place should probably be more promoted. 

​

Individuals with mental illness can also sue under 42 U.S.C. 1983 for violation of their constitutional rights on the theory of failure-to-train. This claim holds that “if a concededly valid policy is unconstitutionally applied by a municipal employee, the city is liable if the employee has not been adequately trained and the constitutional wrong has been caused by that failure to train.”11 In the case Board of Commissioners v. Brown, the Supreme Court identified deliberate indifference as an action in which the municipality should have known that a violation of a particular constitutional right would occur.12 Since encountering an individual with mental illness is so frequent and expected for law enforcement agencies, not having any police training in this area could count as deliberate indifference that would further validify a failure-to-train claim. 

​

The necessity of education about those with mental illness in the criminal justice system among the general public: 

Ken Karle’s essay exploring the issue of people with mental illness being confined in jail rather than being treated in mental health facilities identified that “getting communities…to appreciate the implications of locking up the mentally ill in jails on minor charges and using jails as hospitals for the seriously mentally ill remains a serious challenge.”13 The general public overall needs to be better educated on the benefits of addressing the issue in a humane and successful manner, as this involvement of the public is integral to the community-based approach that is sought after by those looking to improve police encounters with the mentally ill.

​

1. New Era of Public Safety: An Advocacy Toolkit for Fair ... https://www.obama.org/wp-content/uploads/Toolkit.pdf. 

2. Campbell, Alexis. “Failure on the Front Line: How the Americans with Disabilities Act Should Be Interpreted to Better Protect Persons in Mental Health Crisis from Fatal Police Shootings.” Columbia Human Rights Law Review, 2019, http://hrlr.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/failure-on-the-front-line-how-the-americans-with-disabilities-act-should-be-interpreted-to-better-protect-persons-in-mental-health-crisis-from-fatal-police-shootings/.

3. Emergency services: community response: grant program. California Legislative Information, Bill Text - AB-2054 Emergency services: community response: grant program. (ca.gov). 2019-2020 Regular Session, AB-2054, vetoed. 

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Fagan, Jeffrey and Campbell, Alexis, Race and Reasonableness in Police Killings (May 7, 2020). Boston University Law Review, Vol. 100, 2020, Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 14-655, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3596274

8. Fagan, Jeffrey and Campbell, Alexis, Race and Reasonableness in Police Killings (May 7, 2020). Boston University Law Review, Vol. 100, 2020, Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 14-655, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3596274

9. Campbell, Alexis. “Failure on the Front Line: How the Americans with Disabilities Act Should Be Interpreted to Better Protect Persons in Mental Health Crisis from Fatal Police Shootings.” Columbia Human Rights Law Review, 2019, http://hrlr.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/failure-on-the-front-line-how-the-americans-with-disabilities-act-should-be-interpreted-to-better-protect-persons-in-mental-health-crisis-from-fatal-police-shootings/.

10. Hanna, Andrew C. “Municipal Liability and Police Training for Mental Illness: Causes of Action and Feasible Solutions.” Indiana Health Law Review, vol. 14, no. 2, 2017, p. 221., https://doi.org/10.18060/3911.0039.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Kerle, Ken. “The Mentally Ill and Crisis Intervention Teams.” The Prison Journal, vol. 96, no. 1, 2015, pp. 153–161., https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885515605497.

​

 

​