Mental Illness Increases Chance Of Police Brutality
Police officers seem as if they rarely second guess a person’s behavior, including African Americans. It seems that when it comes to African Americans, police officers are always on high alert.
Excessive force by police officers comes at the expense of wrongful conviction, a life, or, worse, lives lost.
Some law enforcers are trained to take to the defensive as their first reaction, especially as they target minorities. Shooting to kill is not always necessary. Police should use their weapons to deescalate a situation without lethal force unless it is absolutely necessary.
Critics of police brutality argue that when there is a police stand-off or a need to take a Caucasian suspect into custody, it is done without the loss of life, yet when it involves an African American, that person usually ends up dead. Why is this?
African Americans that grow up in low-income areas, which are usually plagued with trauma, are at a higher risk of having unrecognized and untreated mental issues.
According to psychiatrist Briana Bell, “The mentally ill are at a higher chance of treated unjustly because they feel as though they can get away with it because they actually, can’t control themselves, or they might not be able to understand what’s going
on.”
As a result, during a police encounter, these individuals can seem out of control, however, not a lethal threat. There is should definitely be another way to solve the situation without the loss of life.
Bell said, “If you look like someone resisting arrest or not listening, but [the officer] doesn’t take the time to assess in your mind, maybe he might have a mental illness”.
