Activists carry coffin of mentally ill woman killed by Phoenix police
The officers had been serving an emergency court order to take the woman to a mental health facility.
So they get to the home of a person they are supposed to take to an emergency recieving facility for evaluation and treatment. She needs this treatment and this is related to why she answered her door with a hammer.
I have worked in Mental Health for 30 years. This is some very standard stuff: people become dangerous because they are ill and delusional. They gotta go to the hospital for eval, safety, and initial treatment. The most basic of stuff.
Happens every day.
Phoenix police have launched two investigations into the Aug. 14 killing of Cusseaux, who died from a single gunshot wound after she threatened police with a claw hammer at the door of her apartment.
And, of course
Cusseaux, who is black, was shot by a veteran white police sergeant who has since been placed on administrative assignment.
There's not a lot to analyze here. There are no new questions to ask: police cannot manage the mentally ill, particularly if they are black.
The pattern is by now clear enough: why is nothing being done?
The department also is reviewing its procedures for mentally ill individuals and will bolster officer training, he says.
Yeah....right.
I put "managed care" in the tags because, the cops' vast inadequacies aside, they might not be in this position if the Bush administration and the economic meltdown of the past several years had not savagely cut mental health services across the board.
The killing of mental health services is likely more to blame than the police, though they don't get a pass.
It would be swell to fix the system: I could do it, it's not difficult, but it's not wanted by those who control this country.