Around 8:45 p.m. on Saturday, the Athens-Clarke County Police Department responded to a shooting in the 200 block of Morton Avenue, according to an email from ACCPD Public Information Officer
Since 2015, nearly a quarter of all people killed by police officers in America have had a mental illness, according to National Public Radio.
âI have a firm belief that if youâre an adult, especially living in this country with a serious mental illness, youâve probably had a negative interaction at some point in your life with a law enforcement officer,â said Joseph Smarro, chief executive officer of SolutionPoint+, LLC, at a University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs lecture on âhuman connection in public safetyâ in January.
Police departments have been working to combat this with Crisis Intervention Training. CIT has been around since the 1980s and is a âcommunity partnershipâ between law enforcement, mental health and addiction professionals and people with mental illness or addiction disorders.