Of the many reactions to a Pittsfield Police officer’s fatal shooting of Miguel Estrella, Melissa Helm’s has stuck with us for its simple truth: “No one should have to lose their life because they are experiencing a mental health crisis.” Helm is the executive director of the Berkshire County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
An internal investigation by Pittsfield police finds that the officer who shot and killed city resident Miguel Estrella on March 25 followed “use of force guidelines” and that Estrella posed an immediate threat as he came at an officer “at a fast pace” with a raised knife.
And yet, the circumstances of Estrella’s March 25 death are becoming all too familiar. According to news reports, police were summoned to Estrella’s apartment building twice that night because Estrella, a beloved and engaged member of his community who also had a history of mental illness, was intoxicated and cutting himself with a knife. A family member called 911 and told the operator that Estrella needed to be hospitalized. The first encounter that evening between Estrella and police ended peacefully. The police returned shortly after the first encounter to find the 22-year-old again armed with a knife. Police allege that Estrella moved toward the officers, prompting deployment of Tasers. When those failed to incapacitate Estrella, an officer fired two shots, hitting him in the chest. Estrella died at the hospital.
The incident is similar to other recent shootings of people in crisis and holding a knife by police in the commonwealth. In January, Springfield officers killed Orlando Taylor III, a 23-year-old man experiencing a severe mental health crisis. That same month, a middle-aged Burlington man holding in the midst of a mental health crisis was shot and injured by police. In February, Lexington police shot and killed a 35-year-old resident of a group home for people with mental illness.
These tragic incidents exemplify what is wrong with our systems of public health and safety and are testament to the dire need for alternatives to our over-reliance on law enforcement intervention in mental health crises. A 2016 study of police responses to mental health crises published in Police Quarterly noted that more than 90 percent of officers have an average of six encounters with individuals in crisis per month and that seven to 10 percent of all police encounters involve people affected by mental illness. A 2016 Boston Globe investigation found that nearly half of all people fatally shot by police in Massachusetts between 2005 and 2015 were suicidal or living with mental illness.
Chanting "Justice for Miguel" and "We need change," well over 100 people rallied in support of Miguel Estrella, who was shot and killed by city police late last month.
The gathering led by Estrella's family marched from Persip Park on North Street to City Hall and the police headquarters, ending at Park Square.
As we continue to deal with the social, economic and political effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, we must act quickly to meaningfully expand community-based mental health services and ensure comprehensive non-police responses to mental health emergencies to prevent future tragedies.
A new Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts report starkly detailed the pandemic’s toll on Massachusetts adults: 35 percent of residents aged 19 and older reported needing behavioral health care for themselves or a relative in the past year. The level of need was disproportionately high among those aged 19 to 39, people of color, and those with lower family incomes. And our mental health crisis may not abate any time soon, as 27 percent of adults expected to need behavioral health care over the next six months — about the same level of need reported over the past year. If we’re to make mental health services more widely available, accessible to all, and high quality, we must begin by increasing our investment in them.
Currently, there is a mental health care “workforce crisis” in Massachusetts in which more outpatient clinicians are leaving positions than are being hired, according to the Association for Behavioral Healthcare. Given that, it’s concerning that bills to improve the delivery of behavioral health care in the commonwealth are proceeding slowly if not stalled in the Legislature.
We must also ensure that people experiencing mental health crises get the appropriate response to 911 calls. The Alternatives For Community Emergency Services (ACES) Act would provide grants to communities seeking to provide a mental health response to certain emergencies. Social workers and other allied professionals are highly skilled at building rapport and deescalating emotionally fraught situations, thus freeing police in certain circumstances from responding to emergencies that can be handled by other professionals.
In cities with ACES-type programs in place, 911 dispatchers divert nonemergency, mental health, substance use and other behavioral-related calls to behavioral health specialists. Such a program is being piloted in Lynn and other communities in the commonwealth. Since launching less than two years ago, a pilot program in Denver, Colo., has responded to 2,294 calls for service that would have otherwise been dispatched to police. The paramedics and behavioral health clinicians who respond to behavioral health emergencies in Denver’s program have never had to call for police backup due to a safety issue.
If we agree that a call for help should not result in the loss of life, then we must invest in services to improve and protect the mental health of people in our communities. Therefore, we must ensure the availability of the proper personnel to respond to the range of emergencies involving people in psychological distress.