Ezenwa Oruh, who died at 47, lived with schizophrenia for years, but was always transported by police, rather than an ambulance, whenever he had a crisis. He's shown here with his beloved nephew, Atulegwu Oruh. If you’re having a heart attack, chances are you won’t be handcuffed and stuffed in the back of a police cruiser when someone calls for help.
He needed care, not cuffs. But in the District, police are the ones who get the call when someone is having a mental health crisis. One way to look at it is discrimination, the denial of services to those with disabilities.
“And even if the person is completely nonviolent, completely in agreement and voluntarily wanting to get help, the only way that can transport someone is to handcuff them and put them in the back of the car,” Knight said.We’re more open about our Zoloft prescriptions and therapy sessions than we’ve ever been. But crisis is what tests the limits of that progress. At the end of the day, the lawsuit states, police are the most likely to respond when someone becomes deeply unwell.
Sometimes, officers are trained to address mental health issues. That was part of the pushback against the ACLU suit — The only problem is that there are only about 44 of them. According to the ACLU lawsuit, they can address only 1 percent of the 911 calls that need them.It’s the routine that Knight at her fellow social workers are used to. They try the CRT team, no one’s available, so the next step has to be that 911 call.“So the police come into a space where there’s already a person who’s experiencing a mental health crisis,” Knight said.
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