For the past five years, law enforcement agencies in Connecticut have been engaged in a project unlike almost any other in the country.
Under a 2019 law, police departments must report all serious use-of-force incidents, describing not only the type of force they used, but also the sequence of events that transpired, and the officer’s perceptions at each stage.
After being refined over a period of several years, the reporting system now provides a unique opportunity for researchers to understand why some police encounters turn violent. Connecticut is believed to be one of only two states that mandate comprehensive, statewide reporting by police.
As we reported last month, a new analysis of that data provides some noteworthy takeaways. Among them, it found Black people faced a disproportionately high rate of use-of-force incidents, a finding researchers hope to explore in greater detail.
A significant share of incidents also involved someone who was in clear mental health distress. Municipal police officers reported concerns about the subject's mental health in one quarter of all use-of-force incidents.
That number immediately caught my attention.
A few years ago, The Accountability Project looked into why these situations escalate, and how some communities are experimenting with alternative approaches to these public safety calls.
We began reporting on the subject after an earlier analysis raised the same concern: Many violent police encounters in the state involve someone who officers believe to be emotionally disturbed or suicidal.
Understanding the nature of these incidents is important because using force increases the risk of injury to both police officers and those who are taken into custody.
One new approach used by some cities and towns is to embed a social worker in the police department. The hope is that they can identify people and situations they are able to de-escalate, perhaps even before a public safety incident unfolds.
We visited the Waterbury Police Department to see social worker Xylia Lopez on the job. Lopez helped police with some of their trickiest calls: kids in emotional distress. Social workers can be effective by providing what experts call a “warm handoff” – a connection to mental health treatment and other resources.
We also learned about efforts to provide police with better training. As of a few years ago, around 5,000 officers in Connecticut had participated in a specialized crisis intervention program, where they learn more about mental health conditions and how to calm people down during tense confrontations. Participating also increases empathy and changes attitudes toward mental illness.
Some cities are relying more on clinicians in the field. Through the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, Connecticut has partnerships with more than a dozen crisis intervention teams – therapists and social workers who are available to help with behavioral health or addiction issues.
More work is needed in the years ahead to understand the results. To that end, researchers plan to look more closely at the locations where police encounter people in distress. Identifying patterns could point the way to avoiding more police calls in the future.
