Cops and the Mentally Ill

Cops and the Mentally Ill - Advocates for the mentally ill are up in arms over the killings, over the past decade, of several mentally-ill people in the Twin Cities.

Advocates managed to get the Minneapolis Police Department to set up a special squad to deal with violent, mentally-ill people. That group has had two major, widely-publicized setbacks - the shooting of Abu Jeilani last summer, and the death of Officer Melissa Schmidt (and a mentally-ill perpetrator) later in the summer.

Now, the Saint Paul PD is coming under fire from the same band of advocates. Chief Finney seems to be unimpressed with Minneapolis' response, and is holding tough on his current model. Currently, SPPD officers don't receive any specialized training after the police academy.

Advocates for the mentally-ill seem to ignore the fact that all of these shootings started with a mentally-ill person charging at a cop with a deadly weapon. It gets frustrating talking with them - because it's always the story. "Cops need special training", they'll say, and "nobody needed to die". Cops'll respond "The mentally-ill person was ten feet away and charging with a samurai sword" - which the advocates ignore in responding yet again.

Hard to know exactly where to come down on this one.