Schizophrenic people are responsible for a lot of death and violence.
Does the officer have to make a 30 second Psycological exam and then just pray the guy with the unstable brain doesn’t kill them?
Should’ve handed the guy a questionaire and a #2 pencil to mark his answers...
People with schizophrenia are far more likely to harm themselves than be violent toward the public. Violence is not a symptom of schizophrenia.
News and entertainment media tend to link mental illnesses including schizophrenia to criminal violence. Most people with schizophrenia, however, are not violent toward others but are withdrawn and prefer to be left alone. Drug or alcohol abuse raises the risk of violence in people with schizophrenia, particularly if the illness is untreated, but also in people who have no mental illness.
In the past, mental patients were less likely to commit violent crimes than members of the general population. The numbers are changing somewhat as a result of the following, though.
Cannabis / Marijuana (and other street drugs) Have Been Linked to Significant Increases in a Person’s Risk for Schizophrenia
http://www.schizophrenia.com/prevention/cannabis.marijuana.schizophrenia.html
No. But the officer needs to be trained to know how to more effectively communicate with a person experiencing psychosis (which is the result of an illness). Such training is available, but not all officers get the training. We have a team of officers in Albuquerque called the "Crisis Intervention Team" (CIT) who are specially trained to deal with mentally ill persons and can usually deescalate a dangerous situation without the need for deadly force.
I have a son diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder and luckily have never faced a situation like that mother, but if, God forbid, I ever had to call the police on my son, I would insist that CIT-trained officers respond.