Police shooting of mentally ill woman reaches US supreme court

In August 2008, Teresa Sheehan, a mentally ill 56-year-old woman, was shot multiple times by San Francisco police officers. The police had been called to take her for an emergency psychiatric evaluation when she threatened a case worker, but the situation quickly escalated.

After Sheehan threatened the officers with a knife, they shot her five or six times, including in the hip and head. She survived but needed two hip replacement surgeries.


Sheehan sued the officers and the city for failing to take her mental health status into account during arrest. Her lawyers argue that Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires officers to “reasonably” modify arrest procedures when confronting people who have mental illness; San Francisco says the ADA does not apply to arrests, especially with public safety at stake.

On Monday, the US supreme court will hear oral arguments in the Sheehan case, to decide whether and how disabilities regulations apply to police policies and procedures during arrests."

*Just last week, video footage went viral of Dallas police shooting dead a mentally ill man whose mother had called 911 for help; a month earlier, international attention focused on a 17-year-old shot dead on a visit to a Texas police station that her family described as a cry for help.

Though national data on police shootings is unreliable, a 2013 study estimated that at least half of all people shot and killed by US police have mental health problems. Despite multiple conclusions by the US Justice Department that police forces systematically use force against the mentally ill, there remains no national standard for crisis intervention."

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/23/police-shooting-mentally-ill-teresa-sheehan-supreme-court