Key Findings
-
- Between 2017 and 2023, 31% of shootings by L.A. police involved a person perceived by officers to be living with mental illness or experiencing a mental health crisis, according to annual use-of-force reports.
-
- The highest percentage in this category — 41% — happened in 2021, when 15 of 37 shootings involved someone perceived to be dealing with mental illness, the reports show.
-
- The lowest was in 2019 when four of 26 people — 15% — who were shot at by police were perceived to be dealing with mental health issues.
-
- LAPD requires de-escalation training for officers and has provided specialized response teams for certain types of incidents, but they don’t have enough clinicians to meet a growing need.
The Los Angeles Police Department has said for decades it was doing more to de-escalate confrontations with people struggling with mental illness, but an LAist analysis has found little change in recent years.
Since 2017, 31% of people shot at by police were perceived by officers to be struggling with some kind of mental illness, according to LAPD annual use-of-force reports.
And that percentage has remained largely steady for years, even as initiatives to reduce those encounters have been funded and deployed.
In many of its own reports, LAPD officials cite “tactical de-escalation training” and specially trained response teams as ways to reduce the potential for violence and better serve the community. The department was one of the first in the nation to pair mental health workers with police. But L.A. leaders, including City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who has been vocal about the shootings,…
Read the full article here
