Columns

Daniel Prude of Rochester New York was slain under heinous and humiliating conditions by local police officers. He was Black and he was having a mental health crisis. Black mentally ill people are often treated worse than white mentally ill people. While I don't have hard evidence to back this assertion, I believe it to be true. And this is based on what I've seen in news coverage and on what I've observed firsthand. 

I can come up with more examples. A Black man was holding a screwdriver (in a completely nonthreatening manner) in front of his home and was having mental health issues. Police killed him. 

"People with Untreated Mental Illness 16 Times More Likely to Be Killed by Law Enforcement" --Treatment Advocacy Center Website. 

I have not seen a lot of studies done about Black vs. white mentally ill people and how they are treated by police. However, I have been in police encounters. And in my experience, police have not usually treated me in an unfair manner or used excessive force. This is probably in part because I'm white. Generally, it has not gone any farther than some mildly hostile words. 

Yet, before I was diagnosed, police did not have computerized access to the fact that they were dealing with a nonviolent mentally ill man. 

I need to say this: Police should not be thought of as stormtroopers. The vast majority have joined because they've wanted to have a good impact on their communities. While I've experienced police harassment many times, between the 1980's and up to 2000, police officers have also come to my aid when I would otherwise have been harmed by a person or situation. 

It is tragic that Black people may feel that there is a need to fear police forces rather than believing they should call when there is an emergency. 

Right now, on both sides of the Black Lives Matter conflict, we need to build bridges and not put up barbed wire. Police need to get off this polarized perception that Black people's lives don't matter. But also, the public should realize that police are also members of the public. We are a nation in which there is no distinction between the citizens of the U.S. and the government of the U.S. 

If police are murderers, it is because they are citizens who are murderers. If one cop is a murderer, it doesn't make another cop a murderer. We are seeing a lot of publicity of police at their worst. Yet it doesn't achieve the television ratings when they are doing their job, part of which is to protect the public. 

We need drastic reform of police behavior and of the criminal justice system, (which fails to dispense justice, and makes good people out to be criminals). Police need to be hired differently, trained differently, and disciplined differently than they currently are. If there are problems, it doesn't make police bad people. It means that police forces are being mismanaged. 

This is not a good decade to be mentally ill, to be Black, or both. If mentally ill, we had better be cooperative with treatment because our lives could depend on it. If Black, this guideline is even more true. Although this is wrong, it is the current circumstance.