Matching Your Energy: The Police, Violence, and Mental Illness in America
Beginning on January 1, 2019, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, for those who like acronyms and lightly buttered toast) began a nationwide collection of data relating to use-of-force incidents by police officers. Who was watching the cops and keeping data before? Newspapers, like the Washington Post.
Interestingly (and unsurprisingly) the FBI has been tracking officers killed or assaulted in the line of duty since 1960, with a data collection program known as LEOKA (Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted — again, acronyms and toast are delicious). If you’re of the #thinblueline, #bluelivesmatter, #copsgunsandapplepie persuasion and want to argue against my not-very-thinly veiled implication that cops only really give a shit about other cops, then I would love it if you would please opine on why it took 59 years, countless dead, often unarmed individuals, scant numbers of officers held accountable, and a national uproar, for the FBI to institute data collection for violence perpetrated by police officers, along with that which is perpetrated against them.
But I digress. I mean, not really, but it’s something people say.
In 1986, the Memphis Police Department, in response to the growing number of radio calls officers were receiving that were mental health…