Gothamist reported Sunday that the New York Police Department was called when a man was having a mental health crisis. After just 28 seconds on the scene, they shot and killed him.
It's part of a long list of incidents in which police have been called into situations with a mentally ill person, and it ended in death.
Such was the case when the father of a 42-year-old "emotionally disturbed" man called for help. His son was holding a large kitchen knife when police entered the scene at 10 a.m. He became agitated, and they opened fire.
The body camera footage showed that the entire altercation lasted just 28 seconds, the NYPD admitted.
“The caller, who is the father, describes his adult son having a medical episode, describing he feels he’s being followed, persecuted, and goes on to state, ‘If any cops show up here today, I will kill them,’” NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said.
Despite the incident lasting less than half of a minute, Chell said, “The officers gave numerous instructions to drop the knife, at which time he did not comply."
The Treatment Advocacy Center's statistics reveal that those with "untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter than other civilians approached or stopped by law enforcement."
The report explained that there are fewer than 1 in 50 people with untreated mental illnesses. However, those individuals make up 1 in 4 of the individuals killed by police.
“By dismantling the mental illness treatment system, we have turned mental health crisis from a medical issue into a police matter,” said John Snook, the group's former director and co-author of the study. “This is patently unfair, illogical and is proving harmful both to the individual in desperate need of care and the officer who is forced to respond.”
