Baltimore City Police Commissioner Anthony Batts plans to send mental health professionals to accompany police officers responding to emergency calls involving people suspected of mental illness, an initiative we hope could prevent more tragedies when difficult situations turn violent. More significantly, though, it is indicative of the holistic view Mr. Batts has brought to Baltimore's crime fight.
When police are summoned to a location by a report of someone behaving strangely or acting in a menacing fashion, they usually have no way of knowing whether that person is high on alcohol or drugs, suffering from a mental illness or a dangerous threat to public safety. Sometimes it can be a combination of all three, and the responding officers may not know how to distinguish between them or which one to address first, which can lead to an over-reliance on force. Having someone along who can assess a suspect's mental condition and suggest appropriate alternative approaches can keep a dicey situation from turning into something much worse.
Recent months saw several well publicized cases around the country in which officers killed uncooperative mentally disturbed people who refused to obey commands or resisted arrest because of their mental state. Police in Baltimore killed a 19-year-old disturbed man, George V. King, in a hospital by striking him repeatedly with a Taser after he scuffled with them and hospital staffers who were trying to keep him from leaving the building. Late last year a mentally disturbed woman in the Fairfax County, Va. County jail died after being struck with a Taser by police trying to remove her from her cell. And in Los Angeles, a homeless mentally ill man was shot and killed by police when he failed to immediately cooperate with officers seeking to take him into custody.
Mr. Batts wants to create a total of 18 response teams made up of a police officer and a mental health professional to respond to calls where mental illness is suspected, a similar arrangement to one he encountered in Long Beach, Calif., where he worked before coming here. The teams would be split among the city's nine police districts, with half working day shifts and the others nights. The teams could make a big difference in dealing with people who are homeless, suicidal or have mental health problems and help prevent another senseless tragedy like Mr. King's death. It's hard to convince citizens to trust the police enough to call for help if they believe it may end up causing an innocent person's death.
Mr. Batts tends to describe Baltimore's crime problems in broad, sociological terms. He rankled many recently when he observed that Baltimore is still stuck in "1950s-style racism," but what he seems to have meant by that is that many of Baltimore's problems today have their roots in decades old policies of segregation and exclusion.
It's a bit disturbing that he was so badly caught by surprise by that fact, but it does seem to have led him in a productive direction in terms of addressing the root causes of crime, such as the low level of educational achievement and high rates of unemployment and substance abuse in many of the city's most distressed communities. A recent report, for example, found that more inmates in Maryland state prisons come from Sandtown-Winchester, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Baltimore, than from any other area in the state, and that fully a third of all state prison inmates come from Baltimore.
It's increasingly apparent that we can't arrest our way out of Baltimore's high crime rate and that law enforcement, at least as it's traditionally understood, isn't the right solution to many of the problems police are called on to face. Mr. Batts' latest initiative isn't the only one needed to address the complicated pathology of Baltimore's crime and violence, but it's a step in the right direction.