By DAISUKE NAKAMURA
news@ColumbiaMissourian.com

In recent years, law enforcement officers in the United States began to use Tasers as an alternative for subduing people with mental illness.

The Columbia Police Department announced in mid-November that it will establish a crisis intervention team to improve its handling of people with mental illness.

Officers will be working with mental health professionals to learn techniques that stabilize individuals who may be acting out their symptoms in public, rather than being engaged in criminal conduct.

While Tasers may provide police officers with a way to control individuals experiencing a mental crisis, concerns about abuse have arisen among mental health professionals, as well as advocates for those with mental disabilities.

Amnesty International considers it an excessive use of force to apply an electronic shock device to unruly and disturbed but nondangerous individuals. Amnesty International rejects the notion that mentally ill individuals should be classified the same way as criminal suspects who are noncompliant but nonthreatening.

The organization equates such use with torturous, cruel or inhuman treatment.

People with mental illnesses are vulnerable to the abusive and invasive use of conducted energy devices such as Tasers, critics say, because these people are less able to comprehend the situation.

“People with mental illnesses are likely to attack when they are armed. However, resorting to a Taser is excessive and unnecessary when people are experiencing an emotional crisis such as a suicide attempt,” said Dr. Herbert Nieburg, a psychologist and member of the American Psychological Association.

Ronald Honberg, national director for policy and legal affairs at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said certain circumstances make the use of a Taser permissible. For example, “when people with mental illnesses are armed.”

Some suggest more research to investigate the effects of Tasers.

“There should be more systematic risk-benefit analysis,” said Andrew Penn, senior staff attorney at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a national advocacy group for the mentally ill.

More training and education has been proposed, layered with collaboration between law enforcement and mental health professionals.

Maj. Sam Cochran, a professor at the University of Memphis Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice who also coordinates the Memphis Police Services Crisis Intervention Team, emphasizes the importance of the partnership between law enforcement officials and communities.

“People with mental illness have special needs and are deserving of special care and services,” Cochran said. “Don’t look at symptoms, but look at individuals with our hearts.”

Professionals and advocates in mental health communities recognize crisis intervention teams as a creative option to teach law enforcement officials to safely de-escalate individuals in a mental health crisis.

Yet Cochran said crisis intervention is not just a program for training law enforcement officers.

“It is a way of life,” he said.