Charleena Lyles, 30, a young mother who suffered with bouts of mental illness, was shot and killed Sunday by police in her Seattle, Washington, apartment. Yes, another one. Here is what we know so far:
1. Police claim the pregnant mother of four, brandished a knife and threatened them. They shot and killed her in front of several children, according to The Washington Post.
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2. She called police to report a possible burglary, and was holding a knife to defend herself and her four children, relatives tell various media outlets.
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3. Lyles “struggled with mental illness after years of abusive relationships and threats of her children being taken away,” reports The New York Times. Twenty-five percent of people shot and killed by police during the first half 2015 were identified by police or family members as mentally ill, according to a Washington Post analysis of nearly 400 police killings.
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4. Police, called for domestic violence, visited the home three times prior to the fatal shooting. What changed Sunday? When officers arrived at her home, she explained an Xbox video game console been stolen and a bag of clothes on her bed looked to have been disturbed, writes The Times. That’s when things escalated. Listen to the audio:
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5. Police have not released the names of the two officers involved in the shooting, but in accordance to department practices they have been placed on paid administrative leave while the incident is under investigation.
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SOURCE: Washington Post, Seattle Intelligencer, The New York Times
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On Sunday morning, two Seattle police officers shot and killed Charleena Lyles in her apartment. She was pregnant, and three of her four children were home. She had called the police to report a burglary. According to the officers’ account, shortly after they arrived, Ms. Lyles, who the police knew was mentally ill, pulled a knife. Both officers shot her. Societal failure to care for mental health, which leaves the police as mental illness first responders, may well have been one deadly ingredient in this tragic encounter.
According to her family and police records, Ms. Lyles wrestled with significant mental health issues. An audiotape reveals officers discussing her police and mental health history immediately before the shooting. Seattle Police Department officers had been called to her residence more than 20 times before this Sunday, with mental illness often figuring in those encounters. The department had placed an officer caution on her address for this reason, meaning officers should be on alert for dangerous behavior from her. Despite repeated previous mental health referrals and the involvement of Child Protective Services, she was alone with her children on Sunday, in distress and with nowhere to turn but 911.
Ms. Lyles’s situation is not unique. People with untreated mental illnesses are disproportionately likely to attract police attention. The combination of mental illness, racial segregation and poverty is particularly likely to result in police contact, often leading to arrest. In fact, a 2006 Bureau of Justice Statistics study revealed that 24 percent of state prisoners report a history of mental illness, with other sources reporting rates in some larger facilities as high as 70 percent. But it was not always the case that mental illness would result in the cycle of catch and release that evidently plagued Ms. Lyles.
What changed over the past half-century is that the United States has seen a stunning decline in resources devoted to public mental health — during the same time the nation adopted mass incarceration. A 2009 International Association of Chiefs of Police review reported that the available hospital beds for persons suffering from mental illness dropped by 95 percent from 1955 to 2005, to 17 beds per 100,000 persons from 340. From 1985 to 2005, the nation’s incarceration rate tripled.
The shift away from hospital treatment of mental illness was not matched by an offsetting commitment to fund the health care people needed to live on the outside. Medicaid reimbursement rates are so low that it is difficult to find providers who will accept it. As a result, many people with mental illness are functionally uninsured for their most urgent health care needs. That is, state support for mental health retreated at the same time state investment in incarceration exploded — and both with disastrous results for vulnerable communities.
The consequence of the disinvestment in public mental health has also not affected all vulnerable communities equally. African-American people are at least as likely as white people to experience mental health distress but are half as likely to receive mental health treatment. This helps to explain why it’s easy to recall other high-profile cases of police use of deadly force involving black victims with documented histories of mental illness.
To be sure, the disproportionate rate of law enforcement violence against African-Americans has a host of contributing factors, including racial bias, both implicit and explicit. There is most likely no single explanation for the tragedy that occurred when Seattle Police Department officers shot and killed Ms. Lyles. But in her case and others like it, the failure of public mental health services appears to have been one important ingredient in a mix of forces that ultimately proved deadly. Without this failure, Sunday’s encounter might never have occurred.
If we are to protect families in similar situations, we must extend the lens of our concern beyond police-community interactions — even in cases where the police pull the trigger. A reinvestment in public mental health resources — including hospitals and, yes, better health care coverage for vulnerable Americans struggling with mental illness — are urgent necessities.
Of course, the cure for these too frequent police-involved shootings must include serious changes within law enforcement. But we must also recommit to changing how we manage mental health if we are to reduce the chances that illness will be treated with gunshots. It is what we owe to Ms. Lyles and to the children who survive her.