Alfred Olango: US police kill mentally ill black man

[Lee-Lee]

27. Let's start with you being honest

I never said training doesn't work. I said training never achieve perfection.

And I am correct on the issue of cops responding to calls just because a mentally ill person is having problems- the way we handle mentally ill people in this country is broken. Cases involving mentally ill people should be responded to my medical professionals, not the police. The only time the police should be called us when that person is clearly posing a danger to others.

If a person is just being erratic or having a breakdown that's not a police matter. It's a health care matter. You wouldn't call the cops for chest pains and it's time to get rid of the stigma and mismanagement of mental health cases and start treating them like health care issues that need health care response and not like potential criminal cases.

All cops do certainly need more training on dealing with mental health training. I did a 40 hour class on just that called Crisis Intervention Training and it left me far better prepared for dealing with it but still way short of what I feel I needed. We can all probably agree that fighting to get this funded and in place should be a big priority. If you fully fund it departments will do it, but it's expensive for them to do.

But also every jurisdiction should have trained mental health professionals on call to respond in the community 24/7 the same we do for physical ailments with ambulance crews. They do this here in my part of NC with every county having people on call 24/7. A call for someone just being erratic known to have mental health issues needs that kind of response, not the police.